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I had a debt on my Bank of America credit card (which I used to pay part of my tuition during grad school). I was unable to pay it, it went into collection and I settled with them. Now I have a charge off, saying "Charged off, settled for less than full amount" on my report.

The charge off happened in Dec 2009 and I settled with the collection agency in Aug 2010.

  • Does it make sense to contact Bank of America directly and see if they'd be willing to remove the entry if I paid the remaining amount?

  • More importantly, will the outstanding amount come back and haunt me sometime in the future?

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1 Answer

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Assuming you have a legitimate settlement (sorry sometimes the collections agencies are less reputable than they should be) then your credit report should be updated to reflect that. You should be able to contact the collection agency and request that they correct your credit report. They have an obligation to do this and there should be no fee for doing so.

If the collection agency does not do so you can contact the bank and request it from them as well. You can also contact the credit bureau and ask for them to request an account status update. I believe if their is no response with in 90 days then the account will be dropped from their reporting.

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the credit report says 'Charged off, settled for less than full amount' - and that is exactly what happened in my case - do I still have a chance to have the entry dropped? – Craig Feb 7 '12 at 18:12
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@Craig - most likely not. – littleadv Feb 8 '12 at 0:00
@Craig - Ahh I thought you meant it still showed unpaid. Give it some time while the charge off is there in a few years with good history you will be fine. And I do not think that the bank can accept payment on that debt now that it has been settled. – user4127 Feb 8 '12 at 1:32
Good luck convincing anyone that an accurate entry on your credit report must be removed immediately. Not sure why you'd even think you had a chance on this one. – JohnFx Apr 8 '12 at 16:26

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