Charge Offs - Dont Just Pay It

Charge offs are detrimental to a good credit score. They occur when an account becomes delinquent for 6 months.

In order to remove charge offs from your credit report you must dispute the listing with the credit bureaus. This is done by sending a credit repair letter to the credit bureaus.

In your credit repair letter you should explain why the listing is incorrect. For example the account has never been paid late, it's not your account or information is wrong.

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.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act was passed by congress in response to incorrect listings being reported. This piece of legislation states that any incorrect or unverifiable listing must be removed by the credit bureaus.

It is common for one charged off account to turn into numerous negative listings and a bad credit score. I will explain the process of what happens to an account once the lender reports it as a charge off.

The delinquent debt is sold to a collection agency by the original lender. Then the collection agency tries to collect payment from you. If they can not then they will report a new 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 will continue dependent upon the size of the account. So one account can become many negative listings and ruin your credit score.

With a number of negative listings it will ruin your credit score. This will also make it hard to be approved for any new credit lines.

In sum I encourage you to dispute the listing before you make payment. I would do this because making payment does not guarantee the listing will be removed.