New to board, now repairing my credit

[Anonymous]

Hello, I'm new to the board and am in the process of restoring and restablishing my credit.  I opened a Capital One Platinum card in May and have been paying it off each month.  I began with a $300 limit and have been bumped up to $750, though I never go near that. I am working with someone to challenge negative reports on my credit history as I have paid them off. 

What can I expect from these creditors?  My currrent FICO is in the ballpark of 602.  The person with whom I am working said that it may be a month or two for the old creditors to answer the challenge letters.  By that time my credit card will be seven months old.  He would not give me a definitive idea as to what to expect my credit to be by January 1, 2018. 

My palm reader sees that I might need a new car by the.  Any ideas from you all as to what to expect  my FICO score might be provided all goes as planned?

[Anonymous]

Welcome to the forum!

When you say challenge negative reports, are you disputing correct information or incorrectly reported information?

If a creditor is going to answer a letter, it will be within a week or two, three weeks max.  I've never gotten an answer back on anything I've sent out in over 3 weeks and I've sent literally hundreds of letters.

I'd suggest hitting up the rebuilding forum for more advice here.

How many negative accounts do you have?  What types of negatives are they?  I would think what you want to be doing is writing goodwill letters, not opening disputes.

[tufa4311]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I am working with someone to challenge negative reports on my credit history as I have paid them off. 

 

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What does this mean - "challenge negative reports"? Are you referring to correct reporting that you would like deleted? Incorrect reporting that you would like to dispute due to the fact that they are not true? Are you referring to monthly reporting on an account? Or a Charge-off?

Please provide additional and specific information so the board can provide specific information on how to improve your score.

[Anonymous]

Currently I have 6 negatives - all of which are now paid in full and on average 3 years old.  I have two positives, one of which is an active account.  It is 8 month old I just had a drop in my score since I just had a big car bill and had to use the card to pay for it.  It should be paid down quickly though.  Luckily I have gotten a 4.3 percent rate on a car loan thanks to my credit union. 

My next goal is purchasing a home.  I am still stuck with these dings though.

[Anonymous]

My dings are credit  cards mostly.  One was an eviction.  These have all been paid off though.

[Anonymous]

It sounds like you may be under the impression that a derogatory mark should vanish from your reports once you put that account right (pay a credit card to zero, pay a collection, etc.).  Thus your desire to dispute derogs on the grounds that the accounts they are connected with have been paid.

That is not true.  It is possible to arrange a "pay for delete" arrangement with a collection agency, but these need to be arranged in advance and no creditor or CA has to agree to them.  The standard expection is that once a derorgatory mark appears, it will stay on your reports for 7 years or a bit more.

[Anonymous]

Do letters to the creditors help?  I've heard there are companies who can write dispute letters.  Also, does the derogatory ding become less of an issue as the mark ages.  I have talked with a couple of creditors that refuse to do the payment for deletion. Of course, all of them have already been paid.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Do letters to the creditors help?  I've heard there are companies who can write dispute letters.  Also, does the derogatory ding become less of an issue as the mark ages.  I have talked with a couple of creditors that refuse to do the payment for deletion. Of course, all of them have already been paid.

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You can pay whomever you like to send dispute letters, but again there is nothing to dispute here. 

At this point your options are to send “goodwill letters” to the creditors asking them to please remove this from your reports. However they are under no obligation to do so.

The other option is to wait out the seven years until it falls off.

[Anonymous]

Here is a link that may guide you on the subject of Goodwill letters:

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Rebuilding-Your-Credit/The-Saturation-Technique-Best-GW-adjustment-o...

Also you may want to visit the Rebuilding forum and chat with the folks there.

You are right that contacting creditors with the hope of arranging for a deletion is best done while you still owe them money.  At that point you have leverage. 

You ask whether the scoring penalty for your derogs will begin to fade after a few years have passed.  That is true for Day 30 lates in the FICO 8 model.  Probably true for Day 60 lates as well.  Unclear whether the passage of time helps with any other derogs, though it's possible that it does.

The mortgage models (which are much older than FICO 8) are much less likely to cut you some slack if you can demonstrate that you have been paying every account on time for (say) 24 or 36 months.  FICO 8 does that with non-severe lates (as I observe above).  The mortgage models may not do that at all, or so I have been told.

[Anonymous]

Good info above regarding GW vs disputes.  You definitely don't want to dispute anything that's accurate, as it's just going to waste the time of your creditor and irritate them, possibly harming your chances of achieving future GW from them.  Your best bet is to take a softer approach and simply apologize for falling short on your financial obligations and let them know that you ensure them that it will never happen again. 

One other thing, you mentioned in this thread that you've been "working with" someone on cleaning up your report.  I sort of took that as you've invested in a credit repair service of some sort, but I could be reading into that incorrectly.  If you could verify what you mean that would be appreciated.