How to Get a Charge Off Removed from Your Credit Report

One of the most damaging things a lender can see on your credit report is a charge-off. Even if a lender is willing to make “high-risk” loans to borrowers with poor credit scores, the presence of a charge-off warns them that you might not pay your bills. It can lead to even second-chance creditors being wary about doing business with you.

Unfortunately, charge-offs happen. In fact, the reality is that bad credit can happen to good people. A lost job, a medical emergency, or something similar and even someone who faithfully paid all of their bills on time can find themselves with slow-pays, no-pays, and charge-offs.

However, you do not want that on your credit report for longer than necessary. Take the following steps to get charge offs removed from your credit report.

First, contact the creditor. Creditors can remove charge-offs from your credit report. Of course, you need to be realistic. Most of them are not going to do this for free. Instead, they will agree to remove the charge-off it you pay the debt, in full. However, they also know that some money is better than no money. You may be able to negotiate a lower payment rate. The older the debt, the less of it that you will probably have to pay. That is because, the older the debt, the closer it is to falling off your credit report anyway. The creditor knows that if they want to get any money from you, they need to get it during that window. When you talk to the creditor, do not let them know that you need them to act in order to get a mortgage or other important loan. If you do, they probably will not settle for less than the full amount.

Second, when a creditor agrees to remove the charge-off from your credit report, you want to get that in writing. A verbal agreement is difficult to enforce. You also want a paid for deletion letter. You can use both of these to make sure the credit agencies are correctly reporting the new status of your charge-off account. While getting them to delete the negative item is ideal, getting them to change it to paid or closed is still better than having a charge-off.

Another way to delete charge-offs is to challenge them. Are there errors in how the charge off is reported? If so, then you may be able to force creditors to delete those items from your credit report. However, they can make changes and resubmit the negative report so this may only be a short-term solution for valid debts.

Does the process sound daunting? That is where we come in. One of our services is helping you get charge-offs removed from your credit report. We can challenge charge-offs, negotiate with lenders to get negative items deleted in exchange for partial or full payment, and take other steps to help you get your credit clean.