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They may have doe this beacuse you cahnged the amount you were paying them, I am not sure. Have you tried to talk with the original creditor about working out payments, or a hardship program? If you had been current and a pretyy good standing with them in the past, they may help. That would keep it out of a collectors hands..

Thanks for your response Bossy. I haven't talked to anyone yet. I'll give FIA a call and see what's up. The fact is that I can't even afford the minimums at this time. I do expect my income to pick up later this year as the industry (building/construction) picks back up. But if I can get relief then I think my best bet is to go through the settlement process and take the hit on my credit report. Right now I'm looking at $16,500 (FIA), $11,500 (AX), $5500 and $12,000 (both BOA). I do ask myself though, if I shouldn't even send minimal payments to them or just not send anything at all and let them default altogether. Am I hurting myself and the process by sending them a few bucks every month?

That was me above

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Ya know..........I've been learning, from this forum, it's a good idea to try to settle something with the OC first. Even if it was already turned over to a CA. Ya see......I'm REALLY getting into trying to clean up my credit. got my Free CR, the other day, on line. I saw a few OC's and the CA's they were sold to. I would like anyone's advice on this one, please.....even if the debt was sold off, can I STILL ( 'safely') contact the OC and work something out with them?

Sometimes Charger but most of the time they say contact the CA. Once it is sold, if you respond quickly you work out a better settlement program. I've personally seen a Discover account sold go from $2000 to $400 for settlement. It all about how good you can debate your position. Like a car salesman....LOL.

So... is it a "good thing" for me to pay a minimal amount, way below the minimums, as a show of "good faith", so that creditors see that I am at least trying to pay? Or am I just wasting time, a little bit of money, and hampering my opportunity for settlement down the line? In other words, will I be better off not paying a cent for the next few months?

What are you trying to do? How many cards do you have? How much can you spend to cards a month?

That is a very tough position you are in Newbs. First try speaking to your credit card peoples and see what, if anything they can do to help you out. I have heard sometimes that they will close a card and work out a payment arrangement, but honestly I haven't heard of them doing this all that often.

You have to take a hard, honest look at your current finances and make sure you cover all your necessities like rent, utilities, food. Whatever you have left over is what you can allocate to getting your bills paid off.

Now, paying less then minimums will get your account landed in a CA's hands and it will adversely affect your credit rating, plus the account will always be within SOL for you to be sued upon. You have already seen how fast they are about this (sending it to collections just 2 weeks after you made the payment).

Honestly, it is up to you on how you want to deal with this. Even if you pay less minimums, it will still impact your reports, so if it helps you financially to stop paying them for a few months you can go that rout and play hardball with the accounts. What I mean by that is waiting for the accounts to get to CA's and start making payment arrangements with them, in writing. Everything in writing. Be honest, explain that with them raising your APRs, your minimums became to much for you to handle. You have every intention of paying them, but you want to do it on terms that won't risk you losing your home or food. If you do this and have all the letters, even if they sue you, you can show that you were trying in good faith to settle your accounts and live at the same time.

Sounds good.
Thank you so much, golden.