June 22nd, 2009What To Do On Credit Report Charge-offs
According to Bankrate.com the number one basis for getting turned down on credit is because of a charge-off. A charge-off is often seen as a destructive warning that you have not been responsible in the past with your finances and thus you cannot be trusted in the future.
However, even in the best of times there are people who face financial challenges and in the existing economic atmosphere there are persons who are facing difficulties that they have never experienced before. Anyone who has had troubles needs to know accurately what can do about charge-offs and other destructive listings on their credit reports.
If a payment has not been made on the account for 180 days the debt will in general be charged off. However, as a consumer you need to know that this does not alleviate you of the liability. The creditor can keep on with their collection efforts in-house or by utilizing a collection company.
Even the most credit responsible people can end up with charge-offs on their report. You may have not been receiving recurring notices of the bill, because of a change of address, or in a frequent case regarding divorce you could think that your ex-spouse was paying it because of a court order.
It is not at all rare for your first notification of a charge-off to show up when you are denied credit because of it. No one is impervious to having bad credit information showing up on their credit report.
It is also a dilemma on what you should do about a charge-off if it is on your report. If you pay it off it will show new goings-on on the account and the 7-year period that it must stay on your report can begin over again totally anew. That means that the destructive credit may stay on your report even longer than 7 years if you pay off an old charge-off. You must try to get it removed completely or at the very least it must show as a “paid” charge-off.
You can take action steps to get negative credit counting charge-offs removed from your credit report. Using creditor negotiations and credit bureau disputes you may be able to improve the status of the bad credit or maybe even get it removed entirely. You will most likely have to communicate directly with your creditors and you can do it yourself or you can appoint a professional credit repair service to assist you.
There are many cases where you will not have to wait the entire 7 long years to get the charge-off or other negative credit removed or at least have the status of it improved. You just need to take some action and get the results.