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Would this be the way to settle a charge off? Call Cap1and say " Look, I owe several people money and am only able to pay one, that one is going to be the one who works with me the most. I can give you $1500 of the $10,000 to settle the debt if you show it as "paid" and not "charged off" or "settled" and remove any and all negative reports in the past and resulting from this deal. Would that work some of the time, a majority of the time, or not at all?
Hi Donald
If your account is already charged off, you cannot get it removed from your credit report before the expiry of 7 years from the date you became delinquent. However, you need to pay off a charge off account by coming to a repayment agreement with the creditor and the creditor may give a maximum reduction of 40% to 50% on your outstanding debt amount. As soon as you pay off the debt, the listing will show as "paid charged off" in your credit report.
Charge off does not mean that you need not repay the debt. If your account is charged off and you do not repay off the debt, the creditor can bring judgment against you. So what I think is that you should always try and pay off a charged off account as early as possible. Moreover, as Mary said, teh creditor may give a discount on the outstanding debt if you show your interest to repay off the debt, but the charge off listing cannot be removed from the credit report.
My personal take on this is a little different...
In the event that an account is charged off, or sent to collection, the damage to your credit score is done. The balance is inconsequential. So paying on a charge-off, or collection account, serves only to do the following:
1) Prevent a sale/transfer/assignment of the account to a(nother) collection company, thus increasing damage to your score, if that company ALSO ends up on your file.
2) Prevents a suit against you by the original creditor, or by any subsequent collector.
3) Prevents any judgments from ending up on your report, which ALSO hurt your score terribly.
In the event an account is already with a third-party, and NOT the original creditor, I suggest the steps often suggested in this forum... Dispute with the bureaus, dispute with the original creditor, and of course, with any third-party.
IF an original creditor sues, work out an arrangement to pay it off over time. That's typically what they're looking for anyway.
IF a third party sues, get a good consumer law atty to defend the case for you. In most cases, they can't even prove that they are entitled to sue you, and the case is dropped. Moreover, you may have cause to COUNTERSUE, and in many cases, COLLECT ON THEM!
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