Author: Matt Douglas
Charge Offs - You May Not Have to Pay
Sunday, August 31st, 2008 @ 2:10 am
If you have a charge off it will cause your credit score to be lower. A charge off happens when an account is not paid on for 6 months.
In order to remove charge offs from your credit report you must dispute the listing with the credit bureaus. This is done by sending a credit repair letter to the credit bureaus.
In the credit repair letter you need to include the reason the charge off should be deleted. Reasons often include: the account being paid, never paid laid or it’s not your account.
Our credit system is flawed and you are assumed guilty until you can prove otherwise. It is common for incorrect information to show on your credit history.
Congress passed the Fair Credit Reporting Act in response to complaints of inaccurate information being reported by the credit bureaus. This legislation simply says that if a listing can not be verified then the credit bureau must remove it from your credit report.
It is common for one charged off account to turn into numerous negative listings and a bad credit score. I will explain the process of what happens to an account once the lender reports it as a charge off.
The delinquent debt is sold to a collection agency by the original lender. Then the collection agency tries to collect payment from you. If they can not then they will report a new negative listing on your credit report.
The collection agency will then sell your account to another collection agency. The new agency will also try and collect and if unable they will report yet another new negative listing.
This process will continue dependent upon the size of the account. So one account can become many negative listings and ruin your credit score.
If you have many negative listings it will cause your score to go way down. It will also be difficult to get approved for new lines of credit.
In sum I encourage you to dispute the listing before you make payment. I would do this because making payment does not guarantee the listing will be removed.
Leave a Reply