Paid Charge Off- How does it affect score?

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone! I'm new here. This forum has been so informative and helpful. I had a $12 charge off on a dept. store card. I though I had PIF'd, and did not open the statements, thinking they were just telling me I had a zero balance.

Turns out there was $5 left on the account, and they had been charging me a finance charge of a dollar a month for 7 months. (Lesson learned: ALWAYS open statements, even if you think it is $0) After I saw the $12 charge off, I paid it. They said they will update it to show "Paid Charge Off". this hardly seems better than a charge off. What will this do to my score (if anything?) Thanks!!!

Message Edited by moonbeam on 02-25-2008 07:28 AM

[Anonymous]

Hi moonbeam, and welcome to the forum. There's a wealth of information here and many knowledgeable people here to help you on your credit journey.

My only experience with a charge off is similar to yours(but a little different).

A charge off, is a charge off, is a charge off. Paid or unpaid it will still hurt your scores.

Since you have paid it the only option left open to you is to write a GW letter(GoodWill letter).

Or you can call the ccc's Debt Recovery department and talk to them and explain the problem. Perhaps they will delete the baddie based on your phone call to them.

That's exactly what I did. My charge off was from an old Sam's Club late charge I refused to pay, because the accounting office at the Sam's Club store I paid at lost my check for 5 days in their accounting office which resulted in a late fee. Last October I called Debt Recovery, explained my problem, they checked, and agreed to delete the $16 charge off from my CR's. I actually owed them nothing but they originally gave me a late fee because of their mistake.

Hopefully you can try something similar. After all, it's only $12 and it was a late fee for crying out loud!

Good luck to you.