Cindy’s Other Blog

If you have a charge off it will cause your credit score to be lower. A charge off happens when an account is not paid on for 6 months.

To delete charge offs from your credit history you have to dispute the charge off. You can do this by sending a credit repair letter to the credit bureaus.

In the credit repair letter you need to include the reason the charge off should be deleted. Reasons often include: the account being paid, never paid laid or it’s not your account.

Our credit system is flawed and you are assumed guilty until you can prove otherwise. It is common for incorrect information to show on your credit history.

Congress passed the Fair Credit Reporting Act in response to complaints of inaccurate information being reported by the credit bureaus. This legislation simply says that if a listing can not be verified then the credit bureau must remove it from your credit report.

It is not un-common for one charged off account to result in many negative listings and a ruined credit report. Let me show you the process of what happens to a charged off account.

The original lender will take the outstanding debt and will sell it to a collection agency. This collection agency will try to collect on the debt. If they are unsuccessful they will be able to create a negative listing on your credit report.

The collection agency will then sell your account to another collection agency. The new agency will also try and collect and if unable they will report yet another new negative listing.

This process can go on and on, depending upon how large the debt is. Thus you can see how one account can turn into many negative listings on your credit report.

If you get multiple negative listings your credit will be in bad shape. It will become extremely difficult to get approval for any new lines of credit.

I recommend disputing the charged off listing before you take steps to pay it. This is because just by paying the charge off does not mean it will remove all the negative listings.