Tigga

Thanks for the replies. I've heard that paying is the worst thing you can do so that's why she's not bothering with it. The debts were in MA and it looks like the SOL there is 6 years, so would that still be a concern since the accounts are 4-5 years old? Here's the amounts for each account that was sent to collections: $6,000 - hospital $5,000 - old auto loan $2,000 - credit card $900 - cell phone $500 - credit card The cards I make her an authorized user on would be probably $4k, $6k, & $12k limits with low or no balances that are paid off at the end of the month, and none have lates or negatives. I'm hoping that would help boost her credit ratings a bit, but not at the expense of a company noticing she has credit and trying to sue or anything like that.

My fiancee has pretty poor credit with 3 collections that are about 4-5 years old each. She'd rather let them go than pay them off and restart the 7 year clock on her credit reports with them. I was thinking of adding her as an authorized user to some of my credit cards (maybe 2-3 w/ $20k-$30k total credit) to give her some credit lines and help boost her score, but I wanted to make sure that wouldn't hurt her in any way first. I wouldn't want a collection agency to notice she suddenly has credit and try to sue or anything like that. Do collection agencies ever really check your current credit or is there any reason that adding her to my accounts would otherwise hurt her?

Cool, thanks again for the advice everyone.

Thanks for the replies. My 2 previous Chase cards are both Chase Freedom with decent cash back and the new one is Chase Slate with no rewards (at least I'm pretty sure it has nothing). I use the 10K one that was opened in 2008 for most of my everyday purchases but hardly use the older one, so that's why I was thinking of merging it. That way I would still have the rewards and a credit limit much higher than I'd ever spend in a month, then have the new slate to put a few big purchases on with plenty of time to pay them off. Part of my reasoning too is I just don't like having so many cards... I'm now up to 3 with Chase and 1 with BOA, AMEX, Capital One, Citi, Discover, Target, Kohls, and I think I still have a random Macy's Visa and something from Sears that I used years ago for the 0% financing. Anyway, if Chase will let me move the limits however I want then I think I will move most of my 5K and maybe a little of the 10K card to the new one, then maybe reconfigure them again once the 15 months of 0% APR is up on my Slate card. Thinking ahead... Once I'm done with the new Slate card in 15 months, would it be a bad thing for me to combine it with one of my original ones so that way I would still keep the credit and age, but feel a little better since I have one less card to keep up with?

I recently got a new Chase card since it had 15 months at 0% APR and I was approved for a 6K limit. I already had 2 other Chase cards, one that I opened in 2006 with a 5K limit and the other was opened in 2008 and now has a 10K limit. I would like to combine my new card with the one opened in 2006 with a 5K limit so I could have a higher limit with 0% APR, but I wanted to make sure that wouldn't hurt my credit before doing so. I guess my main concern is that the card I want to combine is one of my oldest ones and my credit history is fairly short accoridng the the bureaus, so I wouldn't want to lose the age on that account. If anyone could let me know how that works and if there's any reason why I shouldn't combine the cards it would be appreciated.

Sorry if I wasn't clear, but when she called the collection agency said they could NOT offer a pay for delete. They said if she paid though the account would go from a negative to a positive, but that's something I haven't really heard of. Granted I don't know a ton about how all this works as I've only had one issue in the past myself, so that's why I wanted to help make sure she was doing the right thing. So, should the collection agency be able to offer a pay for delete no matter what? If so, then I'm thinking we should hold out until they're willing to do that.

My girlfriend had a debt with Capital One that was transferred to a collection agency. She received a letter today stating that they would accept a $187 payment to clear the $747 debt. She would like to do this, but I'm thinking I've seen on here in the past that you should always ask for a "pay for delete" before settling. She called the collection agency to ask about this, and they told her they couldn't do it but that the account would go from being a negative one to a positive one if it was paid off. Before she pays, I just wanted to make sure this was the best option and that there wasn't anything else we should try to ask for, so any advice would be appreciated.

Just called to combine my WAMU with my Chase Freedom Plus. Took about 3 minutes. I almost asked for a CLI on the WAMU card first since it's only $1500, but figured I wouldn't bother with it since others posted that they had issues with even slightly smaller amounts.

Might not hurt to try Wachovia and/or Chase. I just started the refinance process yesterday and got 5.5% on a 15 year loan from Wachovia. Others were offering me 5.625, though Wachovia said they could give me the lower rate since I bank with them. 5.875 - 6% was the best I was offered on anything longer than a 15 year loan. This was with a 723 median score, roughly $120k loan, and no points.

I put $30k down on a $150k house 3 years ago without any problem. Not sure what my credit score was at the time, but it couldn't have been very high since I only had 2 small credit cards at that time, neither of which was even a year old. My lender told me at the time that credit scores didn't matter very much when you're able to put 20% down. Of course times have changed a bit in these last 3 years, but I would still think you should be able to find someone that would work with you, especially since you're able to pay 25% up front.

Well about 3.5 months later, this collection has finally been removed from all 3 CB's! Just received the last conformation letter I was waiting for from Equifax today. I wanted to come back to say thanks and post in the Success Stories forum, and saw the sticky about how that worked. So first off, thanks to the ones that make this site possible and helped! Here's the rest of my story... I sent in the 1-2 punch as suggested here. This time the credit agency actually responded to my letter about a week later with the letter in post #5. I almost responded with the 2nd letter in that post, but held off thinking it would be best to wait for the CB's to write back. TransUnion and Experian got back to me a little less than 30 days after receiving the letters and said the collection had been deleted (yay, those were easy!). Equifax finally got back to me about 45 days later saying they had validated the debt. I had just checked my Equifax report a few days before (got tired of waiting and forked over the $10 to see what was going on), and noticed that the dates "Reported Since", "Date of Status", and "Last Reported" had all changed from 05/2006 to 05/2008. Having read somewhere that the dates associated with collections can affect your credit score, I noted that I wanted them changed back in my reply letter. The rest of my letter basically said I found it hard to believe they verified the debt when it was removed from the other two and I haven't been able to get a reply from the CA, I want a statement added immediately (saying debt was not valid but Equifax refuses to remove, check TransUnion or Experian for true reports), and that I hope they will re-investigate or I will have no choice but to file lawsuites against the CA and Equifax for reporting false information and failing to get back to me within within the limits of the FCRA (their reply was postmarked 39 days after the received my letter). I noticed I had about a dozen inquiries over the last 6 months then, so told them I wanted updated reports sent to all those as well just to give them a little more work to do. At the same time I sent my 3rd letter to the credit agency saying they were notified of my dispute by TransUnion/Experian, the account was deleted as a result, but they have failed to remove the info from all CB's as they are required. I also informed them that the only other choice they were leaving me was to take legal action if it wasn't removed immediately. A little over a month after that, I received another letter from Equifax. "We have researched the collection account. The results are: This item has been deleted from the credit file." So all and all it took 5 months, 7 letters, ~$25 in postage and CMRR fees, a few hours searching here/the web and writing letters, and just a little persistence. It was finally deleted from the last CB though and my credit score has gone from about 660 to 738 since.

One more... ^^^

bump?

^^

Thanks so much for your help and fishing. I'm half-way debating on seeing if I can find a cheap attorney to sign a letter to send to them in hopes they'll remove it, so I'm sure anything you can find that could be a violation would be a plus. Unfortunately the past reports I have are from Experian and I don't seem to have saved anything from Equifax except the one I ordered this month and the one they included in the reply. The CA is National Credit Systems. No clue how large they are or anything, but they are local to me, as is Equifax (I'm about 40 miles from Atlanta). Apparently I can still access my last Equifax order online, so here's all the info from there: Score Power > Credit Report > Credit Summary > Collections: The TransUnion and Experian columns next to it show "Not Reported". Same report, but from 3-in-1 Credit Report > Collections: Not sure why it's showing different info in different areas of their web site like that. The written copy they sent me after their "investigation" is consistant with the first report from the Score Power page though. Here's some from the older reports as well, but they may not be relevent since they're from Experian and eveything has been removed there. 11/07 - Experian (Checked before doing any type of disputes. First thing listed after the opening paragraph) 4/08 - Experian (same place on the report as before, but with this info changed; this was after sending the CA my first validation letter, but before the 1-2 punch):