Lithix
Full Member
Cash: $ 11.65
Posts: 50
Joined: 17 Sep 2005
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| Fixing/Building Credit? |
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My friend and I are considering going into business together sometime in the future (probably like 2-3 years from now). We assume that having good credit is going to be important in this endeavor, so I'm coming here looking for advice about how to fix mine and how to build his.
Mine is currently bad (I assume, because I had one credit card which went unpaid when I moved about 6 months ago and is over limit now with no payments since I moved). Other than that, I don't have any debt besides student loans and I still have about 2 years left of school before I have to start paying those back.
My friend is in the Navy and I'm pretty sure that he doesn't have any debt besides some credit-building loan that he mentioned.
What steps should we take to fix or build our credit?
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Sun Sep 25, 2005 9:11 pm |
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Rolo
Yo' Daddy
Cash: $ 309.70
Posts: 1551
Joined: 13 Mar 2005
Location: Colorado/Florida
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| Re: Fixing/Building Credit? |
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Ummm....Step 1, fix this:
quote:
Originally posted by Lithix
(I assume, because I had one credit card which went unpaid when I moved about 6 months ago and is over limit now with no payments since I moved).
"Expect me when you see me."
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Tue Sep 27, 2005 1:37 am |
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chiron
Contributing Member
Cash: $ 11.54
Posts: 49
Joined: 10 Feb 2005
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Rolo's got the ticket there.
Expanding on fixing it, there's every likelihood that the original creditor may have called this a charge-off and resold the account to collections by now, it having been quite a few months since your line of communication was broken.
First thing I'd recommend is to obtain a copy of your credit reports; they're free (in money terms) USA-wide at this point, and annualcreditreport.com is the place to go on that first step.
Step two would be to determine (by reading those credit reports carefully) if the original creditor has charged-off the account, which my guess is they have by now. Which means the collections agency is probably listed (and you may as well ignore the orignal creditor). Collections agencies can, ironically, be quite hard to find a phone number for, but usually a good web search can put you into contact with them.
Presuming collections is involved, and presuming you have the cash on hand to pay not only your bill but interest and possibly "fees" (which you can probably talk down), see if you can contact them by phone and propose you repay this legitimate debt, on the (important) condition that the collections agency agrees to provide a letter of deletion to the three major bureaus upon receipt of payment from you.
Note that this idea of "deletion" is different from a change in status, such as a change to "paid in full" or other such things... a deletion in theory removes the entire collections history from your credit record - the collections agency may hesitate or refuse, but you've got a big bill and they want their cash, so you have some leverage there to haggle.
You can of course refuse in the end to pay, I suppose. But the reality is that it is a valid debt, and if not addressed now or soon, your credit may not merely be junked relatively lightly from an incident years back once you go to start your business venture, but you may find that current damage is still being reported years hence: collections is well-known for "renewing" or moving forward the date of last activity on your reports.
This "current pain" movement can result from one agency reselling the collections here and there to other agencies, and other means, most of which are either by design or suspicious coincidence intended to apply pressure on you to pay on your debt. Moving dates forward is arguably disputable in legal terms, but it's a pain to do so. So as my disclaimer, I'm giving sort of the Everyman's easy-out solution here, which is to simply admit (to yourself anyway) that you've got a valid, legitimate debt that needs paid, so pay it, but with the attempted sweetener to your future being the deletion letter, which with luck you can negotiate as a mutual action upon payment.
Be it said that collections is also rather well-known for promising the moon until they get the bling, then not delivering, so if you are a very convincing sort, get them to send you a copy of the deletion letter. This could then be used if the collections' deletion does not appear to have been submitted, submitted as evidentiary includes in a simple dispute letter to the bureau or bureaus reporting "paid in full" (and no other) sorts of activity. Best bet is to send those letters a few months after you've paid, and having pulled new reports (probably will need to pay for those, since free is one/year)... and finally, sample disputes are available online at the FTC and About.com sites among others.
Cheers.
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Thu Oct 13, 2005 6:39 am |
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