My husband has 3 American Express charge offs on his report at this bureau. They were opened up by a very close family member who was addicted to drugs and opened them online to get the cards and use them for ATM withdrawals. Upon finding out about this, we contacted AMEX and requested that the cards be closed. They did close the cards but told us that in order to get the accounts credited out and off of our backs, we had to file criminal charges against our family member so that they could recover the $24K that was owed on the three accounts. We declined to do this and eventually paid the cards off to avoid having to press criminal charges against the family member. By that time, the accounts had charged off. American Express has been very difficult to work with even though we paid the full balance owed to them. We disputed this before as fraud back in 2003 and they came back and said the debt was legit -- even after we had it paid it in full. Now, we are trying to figure out how to get it off our report -- not so much that it is reporting but we just dont want it there.
How can I tell when these will fall off of my report? Is there a certain amount of time for this and when does the clock start ticking? I think two will fall off in 02/08 and another in 2/09, but I am not sure. We would like to get these off of our report as we are going to be going for a mortgage in 03/08 and were thinking we would dispute them again in hopes that since 4 years have now passed, they will delete it since it was paid to them in full.
Your thoughts?
Thanks.
PS--for those inquiring minds who will want to know, the family member is off drugs now for 3.5 yeas and has repaid us in full for the entire 24K that was owed to AMEx
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