What is the best way to fix this???
Date: Fri, 07/31/2009 - 20:03
Here's a little run down on my situation...
I had perfect credit until I moved out of the country. I took with me my two US credit cards which I owed money on and continued paying. After about a year, I was attending school full-time, working part-time, etc. and got behind on payments. I then got slammed with late fees, etc. and eventually stopped paying them because I was overwhelmed and unable to. Sometime in early 2005, I received one collection agency letter from only one of the cards and that was it. I never heard from any debt collectors again.
Now, it's been several years and I finally have my priorities straight. I am working full-time and am making decent money and would like to pay off my debt in the US. I plan to move back soon as well. I know my credit rating sucks tremendously but I just want to pay off my debts so I can start fresh. I'll be able to pay it all off in one lump sum to each creditor and I owe approximately $10,000 in total.
My question is would debt settlement be my best route? Should I contact the collectors myself? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
I would contact them and say you would like to settle these acco
I would contact them and say you would like to settle these accounts and offer them 25% of the debt and see what they say, you could even offer less than that. The worst thing they could do is say no and make a counter offer. When you agree on the amount make sure you get it in writing before you pay anything.
[font=Arial][/font]I agree. I would first pull your credit repor
[font=Arial][/font]I agree. I would first pull your credit reports from all three agencies and make sure that you don't have anything else out there that you have overlooked so you can have a baseline as where to start.
Then make contact and see if you can arrange a pay for delete. As was said before... get everything in writing before making a payment as these companies are notorious for "forgetting" what was promised.
Good luck and you'll find some really good advise here.
Chrissy
Thanks for the information. Just tonight I was actually able to
Thanks for the information. Just tonight I was actually able to log onto annualcreditreport.com and obtain two of my three free annual reports. I am calling the third bureau tomorrow as I had log in issues with it. Anyhow, my credit actually doesn't look as bad as I originally assumed and was different than I expected. I'm glad I took your advice and looked into that first.
On one of the reports, I have a negative credit item which is the collection agency situation. It says on it "Status Details: This account is scheduled to continue on record until Nov 2009." Does that mean after that date, it will disappear off my record? Or is that wishful thinking? Haha! Anyone have any idea? Thanks.
Yes it will go off your report in November (at least that is the
Yes it will go off your report in November (at least that is the best I know). Yay!!!
Chrissy