ca asked:


so i filed a letter of validation to a debt collector because the debt wasn’t mine and a month later i got a letter from Experian saying the outcome of the dispute (DELETED) meaning the debt was verified to not be mine but do all my credit scores update because it showed on all three reports if so how long does it take..

Alice

David Maillie asked:




Many people have and suffer from bad or marginal credit. This does not mean they are a bad person as bad credit can happen as a result of a sudden unplanned illness or emergency, a job layoff, etc… Many families do not have sufficient savings to ride out a serious and costly emergency or job loss. Actually, according to MSN, many families are living only one paycheck away from bankruptcy and this is not good. To stop this one needs to put reigns on all unnecessary spending, but we will talk more about this further on.

The first step anyone with possibly bad credit needs to take is to find out the exact extent of your credit. You may have only seen 1 credit report or only been told what might be on your record by a bank or loan manager or finance manager, but did you know there are really 3 separate credit reporting agencies and each has a different report and score? Just because one credit report shows as bad doesn’t necessarily mean the others do, and vice versa, if one is good the other two may be quite the opposite. Usually, as a rule, they are similar, but negative items or entries do tend to stay longer on some then others and some tend to have more errors in their entry reporting.

Go online to any of the three major credit bureaus (Just Google the names of Experian, Equifax, and Transunion) and pay to have your all three in one report with credit score pulled. You want all three as they can and probably will be slightly different. The report is necessary so you can actually measure and understand exactly how bad it is and what needs to be done to improve and fix it. A all three in one report is around $40 to $50 and worth it. Free reports which you can receive per recent federal laws will only give one credit bureau and no score (how do you know where you stand without a score unless you are a finance manager or work at a bank loan department?)

If your score is 600 and above your credit is marginal, but not bad. You won’t have too much to repair. If your credit is 500 or below you probably have a lot of negative entries, possible tax liens, judgments, repos (car repossessions), a possible bankruptcy, and/or other serious negative influences and entries in your reports. A low or bad credit score will take more work and effort, but you can still achieve a much higher credit rating and fairly quickly.

Now, that you have your credit report and scores, find out which is the most important credit reporting bureau for your area of the country (each bureau has a particular area of influence). The easiest way to do this is to contact your local new car dealer and ask the finance manager what credit report they most commonly use to establish credit. Usually it is only one and that is the one that will be most influential in your area and the first one you should repair.

Glenda

rubie asked:


for about a year now….it was 1250 but he got back 250 for state return and it went to that. I want to know if they can garnish his wages or if they can just take money out of his checking account. If so, which would they go for firsT? This is his second DUI…his first DUI he didnt pay for for about three years…each year he didnt get his state return and it was just deducted…previous years his state was 500-600…so it took about three years to pay it off…..please help! Would they report him to the credit bureau for non payment? cuz they didnt’ for his first dui

Nicholas

Helen Hecker asked:




Of course you don’t want to make any late payments on your credit cards or loans and affect your credit report and score unless you absolutely have to, but what happens if you’re unable to avoid it? It all depends on whether you’re 30, 60 or 90 days past due. If it’s only one late payment you may be able to dispute it and get it removed from your credit report but if it’s more than one that may be difficult to do. And it depends on whether it’s currently past due or long term past due, and other factors.

Understanding how FICO credit scoring works for late payments will help you avoid late payments and understand which late payments will show up for the long term and which payments won’t.

Put simply, FICO credit scores are used by credit card companies, loan and mortgage companies, utility and insurance companies etc., to predict how reliable you’ll be as a customer and how much they can trust you make the payments.

If you’re 30 days late on a payment it will affect your credit score only when it’s reported to the credit bureau. The same applies to 60-day late payments. However these are considered short term and may not cause any lasting damage to your scores. If this happens over and over then this will not be the case. Also a one time late payment of 30-60 days may never be reported to the credit reporting agency. You can avoid a lot of worry by finding out if the creditor reports a currently 30 or 60-day late payment or not. Many do not.

If you’re 90 days late it’s another matter. This can damage your credit report and score for seven years, unless you can get it removed. If it was in error or you had some special circumstances and your credit history has been good then it is worth a try by writing a letter to the credit report company. The three main credit bureaus are Experian, Equifax and Trans Union.

Credit card companies and other creditors look at 90-day or 120-day late payments as a red flag. They can no longer trust you to make your payments on time so your credit score will go down. Their purpose is to determine whether you’ll be able to make your payments on time or at least before 90 days have passed. It doesn’t matter if the payment was for $25 or $1000, they will look at it the same way.

Also sometimes late payments may cause a rise in the interest rates on your credit cards.

If you can avoid making any late payments you’ll dramatically improve the scores on your credit report. And if you haven’t gotten your copy of your personal, annual, free credit report online yet then get one now. Study it and then find out how your current creditors look at late payments. Call them up and find out if they report a 30 or 60-day late payment to the credit reporting agency.

Best of all find some emergency ways to completely avoid making any late payments. Try making your payments online a few days early to avoid payments getting lost in the mail. If at all possible find things you can sell or do some small part-time work from home and try to make a small emergency fund.

Do anything you can to avoid making a late payment. But if it happens, make it as soon a possible so it doesn’t go into a 90-day problem. Ninety days is the point where it’ll be difficult to turn things around and seriously affect your credit report and score and future borrowing opportunities. It’s best to spend a little time learning about credit reports, how you can fix or repair your credit report and scores now and how you can raise your credit scores fast. You may be doing some things you had no idea would cause your scores to drop.

Julie

tarot_princess86 asked:


Alright, I had an account in collections for a really long time. When I started paying it down the collector told me that once it was all paid off that I should send copies of the paid in full letter to the 3 main credit bureaus (transunion, eqifax and experian). However, she did not provide me with the addresses I needed. So I have been circling the internet for hours and hours trying to find these addresses and phone numbers. I found addresses and phone numbers for all three, but these addresses and lines are for obtaining credit reports. My questions are:

Q: If I send my paid in full letters to the main addresses listed, then will someone there know what to do with it, or throw it away because I was supposed to send it to some other (super-secret) address

Q: is it even necessary to send the paid in full letters to the credit bureaus? Because one would think that a collections agency would send that info off in their special way as soon as a debt is settled. ALSO, if it were necessary, you would think that there would either be a designated 1-800 number with PEOPLE to answer questions, a designated PO box address listed somewhere on the internet used for people who need a little more service than a free credit report, or a straight answer about any of these issues somewhere.

Sorry, that last question kind of turned into a rant….

If anyone can help me that would fabulous, and worth 10 points!

Dustin

Staci D asked:


I just turned 18 a few months ago, and have been working at JC Penney for a month. I have not over drawn my bank account. I have direct deposit. I have a house in my name, but it’s paid off. I also have a Netflix account, but I’m not sure if they report to the credit bureau or not. Putting utilities in my name is not an option, and I have a cell phone in my gramma’s name, but I can’t change it into mine until my contract is up in 2010. I have applied for 3 credit cards, Chase Freedom Rewards, Citibank No-Hassle, and JC Penney, and I was denied for all three because of having an insufficient credit history, so I’m stoping there with credit cards. So with all this being said, how can I establish my credit history?

Karen

Hyder Khan asked:




If you’re being turned down for credit left and right by every mortgage broker, credit card company, and landlord, or you’re not even able to refinance your own house, that is an indication that you have some negative items on your credit report that are scaring away lenders. You have two choices: You can either walk away and decide to wait out the next seven years until those negative items drop off your credit report, or you can take control over the situation and learn how to delete negative items from your credit report.

You may have seen those advertisements where those law firms or credit counseling companies promise to fix your credit, raise your FICO score, and get you a fresh start. How do you delete negative items from your credit report? The answer is based on a law passed by Congress in the latter half of the twentieth century known as the Fair Credit Reporting Act. This law was passed to protect consumer’s rights to access their credit report and play an active role in ensuring that it does not contain any inaccuracies or misrepresentations of your true credit profile.

If you have derogatory information contained in any of the credit reports issued by the “big three” credit bureau, you simply need to write a letter to each respective creditor disputing the accuracy of that particular entry in your credit report. By law, then the bureau must contact the creditor to verify that specific item that is in dispute. And here is where the law works in your favor: If the bureau is unable to verify the accuracy of the information within 30 days, they are required to delete that item from your credit report altogether!

Here is an example of how you would do this: Let’s say that you were late for your mortgage payment in May of last year, you simply write a letter to the credit bureau that is reporting that late payment, detailing that entry, and including your name, address, and social security number, in which you state that in accordance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you are disputing such and such entry as you believe it may be inaccurate. And in this letter, you must state that, in accordance with the Act, if the agency does not verify this information within 30 days, then they are required to delete the information from your credit report.

Now what if the bureau is able to contact the creditor and verify the information within the 30-day timeframe? Well, then the information stays on your credit report. What if the creditor is a little slow but gets back to the bureau within 45 days? Then yes, even though the bureau deleted the item after 30 days, the information can be added back in the subsequent month. But through patience and persistence, if you follow this method, you will eventually be able to improve your credit score. There is no 100% guarantee, however, which is why shouldn’t pay anyone to fix your credit for you, unless they offer a money back-guarantee if your credit score doesn’t improve within a specific period of time.

A couple of bits of advice: Write one separate letter to each bureau for each disputed item. For example, if you have five derogatory items on your report, that were reported to all three bureaus, then you should write fifteen letters. This way you can track the progress of each dispute, plus it guarantees that the credit agency will pay individual attention to each one. Give them more paperwork to process and they will be that much more backlogged to meet their thirty-day deadline.

And one final bit of advice: The Fair Credit Reporting Act also allows the bureaus to disregard your dispute if it s frivolous in nature. In other words, if you do something to cause them to suspect that you are just filing disputes that you know are more than likely to be accurate, just for the sake of flooding them with requests, then they can disregard your inquiry and not take it seriously. Therefore, be careful not to do things like repeatedly dispute the same item over and over again if it keeps on getting verified. The law was passed to protect the legitimate needs of consumers against credit fraud or data entry errors.

Catherine

Jimmy Jamm asked:




There has been a move by many apartments to vet prospective tenants by running their credit. This practice was not very widespread before and came to become embodied in many complexes policies after the tragic events of September 11, 2001. In those days, having a job for six months or more or having an income that was at least 3 times more than the monthly rent was sufficient to qualify one. This is not the case anymore. Many apartments have resulted in routine credit ad rental history checks to weed out prospective tenants and many have found themselves denied a decent place to live.

Credit and rental history checks causing many to be turned away

There are a variety of reasons behind why apartments peruse an applicant’s rental history and credit. The most obvious one is to determine whether the prospective tenant has the tendency to break rental agreements (broken leases). They also check to see whether one owes anything to previous complexes. Some of them conduct an actual full credit check while others will only check the rental history. In many cases and in either one of these cases, people get turned away and this adds to their misery especially if they are desperate for housing. The credit checks also only consider the past and may not have a bearing as to whether the person has reformed or not. Regardless, it is a huge inconvenience to be turned away.

Find out what your credit rating is

It is unbelievable just how many people get turned away because of bad credit and who have no idea what is in their credit. They also do not know what information the apartments used to base their denial. This cruel surprise ought not to be. It is now extremely easy to download all three bureau credit reports right from the Internet for less than 50 dollars. Getting a copy of one’s credit ensures that they are away as to what is causing the problem.

Getting the approval despite spotty credit or a broken lease

There are numerous tactics that can be used to be approved for an apartment even with a broken lease or bad credit. Many of these cannot be discussed in the scope of this article but one of them is to find a co-signer. This is someone who has good credit and they can act as a guarantor. One can also write a letter that states exactly what steps they are taking to remedy their bad credit. Many apartment complexes take this as a sign of good faith.

Want to win an approval despite of having a broken lease or bad credit? There are various techniques that one can employ. One of the best one is to find out what apartments in your area that DO NOT conduct credit checks or the ones that approve despite of a broken lease.

Cynthia

Sarah W asked:


I checked my score at Experian.com and it was 780, that was exactly one month ago, and nothing on my credit has changed, yet when I went to creditkarma.com, they said my transunion score was only 671. Why is that? I even checked my report, and all three bureaus have the exact same information, so why the huge gap?

Darrell

Sara asked:


Hello, I co-signed on an ex-boyfriends truck (stupid, I know) and he never ended up making payments. I have been receiving calls from a company called Syncom and they are willing to negotiate a settlement to help repair my credit. The balance is $4700, but they sent me a fax that said if I pay $1400, they will settle this and report it to all three credit bureaus. Has anyone else been through this-does it help out your credit a lot? Any info would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks, so far. His truck was repossessed, and this was only 4 years ago. I am looking to buy a home with my now husband, and my credit score is so poor because of this. What they sent me in writing (by fax) is that “Upon receipt of the settlement, which is $1400, our client will inform the Credit Reporting Agencies that the account has been settled in full”. I really want to work on fixing my score and I feel like this is the best option, so I don’t have to wait the 7 years.

Charlie