By
condemnity
Hi All,
I'm trying to understand the best approach on good will letters for two cards that I settled a few years ago and finished paying in 2020.
I had a Bank of America card and Amex which were both charged off after working with a debt settlement company. I was then sued by both cards and BoA garnished my bank account.
After hiring a lawyer, the accounts got settled and I finished paying last year. However, the law firm I hired didn’t secure any guarantee to remove the cards from my credit report after payment.
I'm starting to look for car leases through Honda and want to improve my scores to get the best rate/amount before I apply so I’m trying to figure out how to handle those two accounts in particular.
My FICO scores are currently - Ex: 646; Eq: 657; TU: 617.
The issues are:
* Serious delinquency
* Few accounts paid on time
* No loan activity
* Bad payment history
I've done a few things to start counteracting the effects, including:
* Opening a credit card account with Amex (1k limit) in November of last year, not using it too much and paying it in full each month.
* Opening a Capital One card (2k limit) in April, using it more frequently for every day purchases and paying full balances every few weeks.
* Opening a credit builder loan this month to establish a consistent payment history.
* Asking my girlfriend who has excellent credit and a long credit history to put me on as a registered user.
I think these are good steps to take, but the obvious big issue is the serious delinquency, so I'm trying to get the credit cards removed from my CR.
I've disputed the cards to try to have them removed from all three CRAs and they both came back as verified, so that didn’t work.
My next step is going to be a good will letter to both creditors.
I'm mainly planning on highlighting the circumstances (divorce, undisciplined spending, etc) that caused me to default.
I then want to highlight with Amex that I have a new card with them and have been very responsible over the course of the last few months. For both cards, I want to highlight all of the progress I've made in my financial life, learning to budget and to be disciplined about financial management, my changed views on credit, etc.
My hope is that they will remove the accounts from my CR and that will highlight my positive payment history on past loans, etc.
My main question for the group is, do you see any issues with my approach (mainly with regards to the goodwill letter, but generally is also welcome)?
Should I try to remove individual payments instead of trying to remove the entire cards?
I did have a positive payment history with each card at some point, so I feel this could be a more useful approach, but it seems a lot more work for whoever reads the letter vs just deleting the account completely.
Any other advice on what to include? Would it be crazy to include budgets, net worth statements, etc to prove that I’m on the up and up?
Thanks in advance!
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