Help Me Understand Equifax

[Sadie5150]

This is crazy.  I had an account with Cap One that was settled for less in 3/2016.  Done.  Not so fast.  I did a dumb thing because I thought it would help me and called Cap in 9/2018 and asked if I could pay the amount they wrote off.  Mind you the account was closed at that time.  NOW, I pull my report and see that my Equifax shows 41 Charge off's as they added an "N" for every month from 6/2015-10/2018.  I email Cap One and they say that they're not reporting it that way.  I ask them for a deletion and she says she'll have to get back to me.  Here's where it gets weird.  I get a notification from MyFico saying account change.  I look and my Equifax score dropped 37 points and stated that account was updated.  The only thing that updated was that they changed status date to 10/2020.  GRRRR... So I email Cap One and advise them what had occurred and she calls me to let me know that they were not reporting all of the lates from the time I settled.  THEN, I go back to MyFico today and my score is back to where it was before the 37 point drop.  AND, there's no notification of any type advising me that my score had changed.  They took off all "N" status remarks back to 9/2018, with only 9 showing now.  I would think that my score would surely go up if 32 negative months were removed.  Can anyone explain this to me?  I feel like it's a bit corrupt.

[Anonymous]

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@Sadie5150 wrote:

This is crazy.  I had an account with Cap One that was settled for less in 3/2016.  Done.  Not so fast.  I did a dumb thing because I thought it would help me and called Cap in 9/2018 and asked if I could pay the amount they wrote off.  Mind you the account was closed at that time.  NOW, I pull my report and see that my Equifax shows 41 Charge off's as they added an "N" for every month from 6/2015-10/2018.  I email Cap One and they say that they're not reporting it that way.  I ask them for a deletion and she says she'll have to get back to me.  Here's where it gets weird.  I get a notification from MyFico saying account change.  I look and my Equifax score dropped 37 points and stated that account was updated.  The only thing that updated was that they changed status date to 10/2020.  GRRRR... So I email Cap One and advise them what had occurred and she calls me to let me know that they were not reporting all of the lates from the time I settled.  THEN, I go back to MyFico today and my score is back to where it was before the 37 point drop.  AND, there's no notification of any type advising me that my score had changed.  They took off all "N" status remarks back to 9/2018, with only 9 showing now.  I would think that my score would surely go up if 32 negative months were removed.  Can anyone explain this to me?  I feel like it's a bit corrupt.

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Not necessarily. I went down 55 negative marks and got a whopping +0 pts. Depends on your profile, entirely.

[Sadie5150]

@Anonymous 

I think what I find to be the strangest is how it was obvious that Cap One somehow got in touch with Equifax and had the information corrected/changed and not one notification sent to me saying that my score had gone back up.  It just magically did... 

[chiefone4u]

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@Sadie5150 wrote:

This is crazy.  I had an account with Cap One that was settled for less in 3/2016.  Done.  Not so fast.  I did a dumb thing because I thought it would help me and called Cap in 9/2018 and asked if I could pay the amount they wrote off.  Mind you the account was closed at that time.  NOW, I pull my report and see that my Equifax shows 41 Charge off's as they added an "N" for every month from 6/2015-10/2018.  I email Cap One and they say that they're not reporting it that way.  I ask them for a deletion and she says she'll have to get back to me.  Here's where it gets weird.  I get a notification from MyFico saying account change.  I look and my Equifax score dropped 37 points and stated that account was updated.  The only thing that updated was that they changed status date to 10/2020.  GRRRR... So I email Cap One and advise them what had occurred and she calls me to let me know that they were not reporting all of the lates from the time I settled.  THEN, I go back to MyFico today and my score is back to where it was before the 37 point drop.  AND, there's no notification of any type advising me that my score had changed.  They took off all "N" status remarks back to 9/2018, with only 9 showing now.  I would think that my score would surely go up if 32 negative months were removed.  Can anyone explain this to me?  I feel like it's a bit corrupt.

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They can technically get away with updating your report with all three CRA's since you paid in full. By making Capital One whole again, they are technically required to change the account status from "settled for less" to "paid after charge off"; this status update looks to FICO score models as if its a recent charge off. 

I'd expect the ding to reappear unless you can convince them to delete the account from your reports, in which case you could see a significant score boost if you have no other negative marks in your reports. 

[Sadie5150]

@chiefone4u 

I don't.  My only other bad mark was Dept of Ed and after fighting them to the bitter end, with complaints to everyone, they finally deleted the tradeline that they were reporting completely wrong.  Can you give me any advice on how I can request Cap One to delete the account.  I've requested it via phone conversation with the lady who's been calling me in response to my emails, but she wouldn't commit to any deletions.  Only that she would present it to the "panel" again to see what they will do.   This whole thing has me so frustrated.  Had I known then, what I know now regarding credit reporting, I would've let that ride out until deletion time.  Now, I'm paying dearly.  Mortgage broker said that my score would be about 75-100 points higher if that were gone. . It's DOFD is 10/2014.  So, a year to go if I can't get it removed. 

[chiefone4u]

Might see if @Anonymous can point you in the right direction 

Their story: 

https://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Rebuilding-Your-Credit/Capital-One-Goodwill-Success-UPDATE/td-p/6064531 

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[Anonymous]

@Sadie5150 I have successfully gotten capital one to remove 3 late payments. Honestly, they weren't the quickest at removing, but were by far the best when it came to customer service and goodwill requests. My situation was due to a pretty bad accident that led to some hospitalization time, and I've heard from others that you have to have a certain "qualifying event" for them to consider removing a derogatory mark. You could try emailing them an official goodwill email and see what they say. It took them about a week to respond to me.

[Anonymous]

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@Sadie5150 wrote:

This is crazy.  I had an account with Cap One that was settled for less in 3/2016.  Done.  Not so fast.  I did a dumb thing because I thought it would help me and called Cap in 9/2018 and asked if I could pay the amount they wrote off.  Mind you the account was closed at that time.  NOW, I pull my report and see that my Equifax shows 41 Charge off's as they added an "N" for every month from 6/2015-10/2018.  I email Cap One and they say that they're not reporting it that way.  I ask them for a deletion and she says she'll have to get back to me.  Here's where it gets weird.  I get a notification from MyFico saying account change.  I look and my Equifax score dropped 37 points and stated that account was updated.  The only thing that updated was that they changed status date to 10/2020.  GRRRR... So I email Cap One and advise them what had occurred and she calls me to let me know that they were not reporting all of the lates from the time I settled.  THEN, I go back to MyFico today and my score is back to where it was before the 37 point drop.  AND, there's no notification of any type advising me that my score had changed.  They took off all "N" status remarks back to 9/2018, with only 9 showing now.  I would think that my score would surely go up if 32 negative months were removed.  Can anyone explain this to me?  I feel like it's a bit corrupt.

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@Sadie5150 welcome. First off N means no data I believe. So they don't hurt you.

When you paid it off, as stated upthread, they were required to update it to paid in full. That brought the date of recency from 16 to 2018.

When they recently updated it because you contacted them, the status date of 2020 caused you to lose points, not the additional Ns.

You can only have one chargeoff per account, you're simply looking at the payment history and it repeats because that is the status until it ages off.

I don't care if there are 50 COs, it's only one chargeoff and the date goes from that status date when it was paid, so when they changed it back to 2018, you got your points back.

All you can do is try Goodwill deletion, but now you know why and how it works.

[Anonymous]

@Anonymous on the EX app, "N" means "negative" and unfortunately, the EX app counts every month that it is reported "CO" as "charge offs", which you are correct does not matter, but I really wish they wouldn't say it that way.

@Sadie5150 when you hover over the "N" how many days late does it say it is? Or what does it say? If you hover over the "N" it will tell you what makes it negative.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for correcting me, but as you said, it goes by the date not the graph but you’re right they should do that differently because it looks bad if you don’t know better.