Settling Charge Offs, Judgments and Collections
If a credit line is in default, unpaid or a charge off it is time to settle the account. You can do this by contacting the creditor and offering a settlement. The phone number for each creditor can be found on the report. You will find that charged off accounts that have been sold will typically settle for less then full balance. The exception to this is utility accounts like electric, phone, cable etc. They will rarely settle for less then full balance. Also judgments will rarely settle for less then full balance as they already have a judgment against you. You will find that you can settle many of these accounts for quite a bit less then you owe. I would like to point out that you shouldn’t be too greedy and when making an offer to settle. I have found that a good hard luck story works well and keep in mind a good jumping off point is about 50% of the debt owed for an offer to settle.
Once you have settled an account that is a negative line on your credit I suggest disputing it to correct the information on your report. There is a school of thought that you can remove a negative line without paying by simply disputing the line over and over. It has been my experience that this is true but keep in mind every time that bad debt is sold it can come back to the report and the whole process can begin again. . The other school of thought is once an account is settled, if it is disputed as paid as agreed there is a good chance it will appear as such on the report and I have seen this before. It seems that this is more likely to occur on settled and closed accounts then on active or unpaid accounts.
About the Author
Free Credit Repair is produced by Don Troiano author of Credit Repair Made Easy. Mr. Troiano spent many years in the mortgage industry and learned a great deal about how credit and credit reports work as part of his profession. This tutorial will help you remove fraudulent and inaccurate information from your credit report. He has shared this knowledge on this web site as a public service. Use of this site is subject to the terms of service. This web site is for informational purposes only.
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