QUOTE(exxo2)
WOW!
Where do I start ?
Well, I first found Creditboards by mistake. I was browsing the web one night and not even thinking about credit or anything even credit related.
I was actually searching another forum for something totally unrelated and saw a post about improving your credit score. Though I had not even thought about my credit in years, I read the post. That post had a link to some other forums and Creditboards was one of them.
I came to the board but didn’t register or anything. I just read a lot to kind of see what the forum was all about.
I quickly saw that there was some very interesting information. So, after doing a lot of reading, I registered and started asking questions.
I was encouraged to pull my FICO scores just to see where my scores even were.
Now, I knew I hadn’t used credit in a long time, but I had no idea my scores were as low as they were.
As of April 29, my scores were EX-599, TU-480 and EQ-484 !
I was shocked! But at the same time, I knew there were small bills that I had in the past that I use to think “Oh well-big deal”.
Well, according to my credit reports, obviously it WAS a big deal. I had A LOT of negatives on my report, chargeoffs, collection accounts, and unrecognized inquiries. This was in addition to the usual stuff like alias names, mis-spelled names, social security number variations-you name it.
So the clean up began.
I didn’t really have a goal in mind, just that I thought it was horrible that I had neglected my credit scores. But, it did cross my mind that I would like to move out of an apartment and buy a house.
I just kept disputing and reading. Everybody that kept reporting their experiences with different collection agencies helped a ton.
I must admit, it was a VERY frustrating process at first. I mean, hell, there was even a couple times where I would think “You know what, I quit”. But I didn’t. I just remembered what my girlfriend always told me…”When you get that frustrated with something, you just need to take a break from it and then try more”. She was right again.
I kept going and kept seeing results. It seemed that everytime I just stuck with an account, I got positive results. I was hooked then!
Then something really weird happened. All of a sudden one day, it hit me, I was like “You know what, this is starting to be fun”. I was starting to enjoy taking on the different collection agencies. It was amazing to me how easy it was to get them to violate the law.
I know it may sound sick, but, I was enjoying going to the post office and mailing certified letters, checking Privacygaurd, and disputing stuff.
Once it became fun to me, I knew they were doomed. It was now like a game to me and I don’t like to lose games.
I think some of those collection agencies deleted just because they got sick of me. Correction, they got sick of me and everybody I was sicking on them (ie; BBB, FTC, Attorney General).
As I said, I started April 29, 2004. By January, 2005…I had successfully gotten all collection accounts deleted and all personal information corrected. I must say, my favorite and most fun times were when the credit reporting agencies (namely Equifax and Experian) would put my file with their so called “Special Handling Department”.
I don’t know if they think they are punishing you when they do this, but I saw it as a good thing. You mean to tell me that now when I call, I don’t have to talk to Habib from India that can’t even speak English well ? AWESOME!
But the greatest part of Special Handing was when they would say to me “That account WILL remain on your file”.
I knew when those accounts were about to get deleted because all of a sudden, Special Handling wouldn’t even take my calls. Usually, 2-3 days later I would receive a letter in the mail from that collection agency saying that they agreed to delete the account. Haha
No wonder they didn’t want to take my calls anymore. Maybe they feared I was gonna say “What was that you said about ‘That account WILL remain on your file’ ?”
I probably would have too.
Getting those deleted also got my file transferred back to being able to deal with the regular monkeys. No more Special Handling for me.
Other factors that helped were, of course, BUMPAGE, and EQ’s niceness about inquiries. No need to expound on that one.
Along the way, I only applied for 2 credit cards. Those were Orchard and Target. I did that ONLY to get a couple more positive tradelines. I also got added as an AU on 2 of my girlfriend’s cards. She put me on 2 that had nice history on them. Of course I didn’t want to use the cards, I just wanted the benefit of the pay history.
Then….another major turning point came. One that caused me to have to take a break from the forum and my credit repair.
While sitting on my laptop reading this forum, I felt a weird feeling in my stomach. I rushed into the bathroom thinking I just had to do the normal. WRONG! Blood came pouring out like crazy!
Not knowing any better, I flushed the toilet and began walking out of the bathroom and BAM! I collapsed! Just from reflex I guess, I tried to get up and BAM! I went down again. Something was wrong. The ambulance came and took me to the hospital. I am not ashamed to admit that I was scared as hell! I thought, hmmm, I must be dying. I thought that because I have never had internal bleeding or collapsed in my life.
But, they got me in there and did their thing. I remember laying there and Creditboards crossed my mind (among many other more important things like my family) and I thought “Man, all that work was almost for nothing”.
The doctor said I was stressed out and had developed bleeding ulcers. Then, to top that off, when I collapsed I had hit my face on the edge of the door frame (yep right on the sharp edge) and broke my face. Don't worry, I don't have a Tom Cruise-Vanilla Sky mask.
Well, after all the advice I got from the forum, the people who took the time to PM me about individual issues and just being persistent, I felt it was okay to check my FICO scores again.
This time my scores were EX-654, TU-648 and EQ-639. Not too bad at all.
I knew they could be better but that was an incredible improvement in my opinion.
The scores were hindered by one account showing some 30 day lates that are still there.
So, quietly, I applied for that mortgage for my first shot at owning a home.
I had no problem getting pre approved! I went through the entire process and I am suppose to close on my first home this Wednesday. That’s providing nothing comes up before then or some old account pops back up to haunt me.
But I WILL post pictures if everything goes well.
There has been times where I wanted to apply for some good credit cards but being that I applied for a mortgage, I’m waiting until that closes first. Can’t risk it right now.
But anyway, regardless of what happens with that, I just wanted to say THANK YOU to everybody on this forum (and the Mortgage forum) for helping me out. Like I said, your reporting back with your experiences helped me plan my attack on them. I now have no collection accounts on any of my reports.
And even though I discovered this board by accident, it made a HUGE difference in my life and the way I view credit now.
I’m not going anywhere. As some of you see, I’m still here every single day.
Where do I start ?
Well, I first found Creditboards by mistake. I was browsing the web one night and not even thinking about credit or anything even credit related.
I was actually searching another forum for something totally unrelated and saw a post about improving your credit score. Though I had not even thought about my credit in years, I read the post. That post had a link to some other forums and Creditboards was one of them.
I came to the board but didn’t register or anything. I just read a lot to kind of see what the forum was all about.
I quickly saw that there was some very interesting information. So, after doing a lot of reading, I registered and started asking questions.
I was encouraged to pull my FICO scores just to see where my scores even were.
Now, I knew I hadn’t used credit in a long time, but I had no idea my scores were as low as they were.
As of April 29, my scores were EX-599, TU-480 and EQ-484 !
I was shocked! But at the same time, I knew there were small bills that I had in the past that I use to think “Oh well-big deal”.
Well, according to my credit reports, obviously it WAS a big deal. I had A LOT of negatives on my report, chargeoffs, collection accounts, and unrecognized inquiries. This was in addition to the usual stuff like alias names, mis-spelled names, social security number variations-you name it.
So the clean up began.
I didn’t really have a goal in mind, just that I thought it was horrible that I had neglected my credit scores. But, it did cross my mind that I would like to move out of an apartment and buy a house.
I just kept disputing and reading. Everybody that kept reporting their experiences with different collection agencies helped a ton.
I must admit, it was a VERY frustrating process at first. I mean, hell, there was even a couple times where I would think “You know what, I quit”. But I didn’t. I just remembered what my girlfriend always told me…”When you get that frustrated with something, you just need to take a break from it and then try more”. She was right again.
I kept going and kept seeing results. It seemed that everytime I just stuck with an account, I got positive results. I was hooked then!
Then something really weird happened. All of a sudden one day, it hit me, I was like “You know what, this is starting to be fun”. I was starting to enjoy taking on the different collection agencies. It was amazing to me how easy it was to get them to violate the law.
I know it may sound sick, but, I was enjoying going to the post office and mailing certified letters, checking Privacygaurd, and disputing stuff.
Once it became fun to me, I knew they were doomed. It was now like a game to me and I don’t like to lose games.
I think some of those collection agencies deleted just because they got sick of me. Correction, they got sick of me and everybody I was sicking on them (ie; BBB, FTC, Attorney General).
As I said, I started April 29, 2004. By January, 2005…I had successfully gotten all collection accounts deleted and all personal information corrected. I must say, my favorite and most fun times were when the credit reporting agencies (namely Equifax and Experian) would put my file with their so called “Special Handling Department”.
I don’t know if they think they are punishing you when they do this, but I saw it as a good thing. You mean to tell me that now when I call, I don’t have to talk to Habib from India that can’t even speak English well ? AWESOME!
But the greatest part of Special Handing was when they would say to me “That account WILL remain on your file”.
I knew when those accounts were about to get deleted because all of a sudden, Special Handling wouldn’t even take my calls. Usually, 2-3 days later I would receive a letter in the mail from that collection agency saying that they agreed to delete the account. Haha
No wonder they didn’t want to take my calls anymore. Maybe they feared I was gonna say “What was that you said about ‘That account WILL remain on your file’ ?”
I probably would have too.
Getting those deleted also got my file transferred back to being able to deal with the regular monkeys. No more Special Handling for me.
Other factors that helped were, of course, BUMPAGE, and EQ’s niceness about inquiries. No need to expound on that one.
Along the way, I only applied for 2 credit cards. Those were Orchard and Target. I did that ONLY to get a couple more positive tradelines. I also got added as an AU on 2 of my girlfriend’s cards. She put me on 2 that had nice history on them. Of course I didn’t want to use the cards, I just wanted the benefit of the pay history.
Then….another major turning point came. One that caused me to have to take a break from the forum and my credit repair.
While sitting on my laptop reading this forum, I felt a weird feeling in my stomach. I rushed into the bathroom thinking I just had to do the normal. WRONG! Blood came pouring out like crazy!
Not knowing any better, I flushed the toilet and began walking out of the bathroom and BAM! I collapsed! Just from reflex I guess, I tried to get up and BAM! I went down again. Something was wrong. The ambulance came and took me to the hospital. I am not ashamed to admit that I was scared as hell! I thought, hmmm, I must be dying. I thought that because I have never had internal bleeding or collapsed in my life.
But, they got me in there and did their thing. I remember laying there and Creditboards crossed my mind (among many other more important things like my family) and I thought “Man, all that work was almost for nothing”.
The doctor said I was stressed out and had developed bleeding ulcers. Then, to top that off, when I collapsed I had hit my face on the edge of the door frame (yep right on the sharp edge) and broke my face. Don't worry, I don't have a Tom Cruise-Vanilla Sky mask.
Well, after all the advice I got from the forum, the people who took the time to PM me about individual issues and just being persistent, I felt it was okay to check my FICO scores again.
This time my scores were EX-654, TU-648 and EQ-639. Not too bad at all.
I knew they could be better but that was an incredible improvement in my opinion.
The scores were hindered by one account showing some 30 day lates that are still there.
So, quietly, I applied for that mortgage for my first shot at owning a home.
I had no problem getting pre approved! I went through the entire process and I am suppose to close on my first home this Wednesday. That’s providing nothing comes up before then or some old account pops back up to haunt me.
But I WILL post pictures if everything goes well.
There has been times where I wanted to apply for some good credit cards but being that I applied for a mortgage, I’m waiting until that closes first. Can’t risk it right now.
But anyway, regardless of what happens with that, I just wanted to say THANK YOU to everybody on this forum (and the Mortgage forum) for helping me out. Like I said, your reporting back with your experiences helped me plan my attack on them. I now have no collection accounts on any of my reports.
And even though I discovered this board by accident, it made a HUGE difference in my life and the way I view credit now.
I’m not going anywhere. As some of you see, I’m still here every single day.