let's talk about charge offs and how to get those removed from your credit
hi folks welcome back to my channel it's me jazzy mac and i appreciate all of you that
have liked and subscribed to my channel i love it when you guys comment because it really does help
the channel to grow and it helps the algorithm to pick up this channel and show it to more people
so thank you so much for all of your support now today we're going to talk about charge offs
as you guys know i have a video that talks about collections and how to get those collections
removed and of course i've always got supplemental materials available for you guys i have templates
down below for anybody that just kind of wants that extra guidance in how to write
those letters that help you to get items removed from your credit so that's going to be in the
description box but let's talk about charge offs now there seems to be a bunch of confusion about
what charge offs are so generally a charge off is going to usually be a credit card account that um
you missed payments on the account got closed and the creditor which would be you know amex
it'd be mastercard whoever you had the credit card with that creditor decided that they're not going
to get their money from you so they've written it off they've written it off as just a loss
so now it's a charge off and that's pretty much that's the only difference between a charge off
in a collection the charge off it's been written off like kind of like from a texas point of view
or from a business point of view but a collection is something that has been turned over to a
collection agency in hopes that the money is going to be recovered so with a charge off it definitely
holds the same amount of weight as a collection it it is just as derogatory and um it is it has that
negative impact on it um and it's the same you know sort of thing that you want to get removed as
soon as possible so if you have a charge off you can definitely think of it as a collection that
has been written off by the company does that mean that you don't technically still owe the money
your state laws are going to vary on that and how that's treated but in general for a charge off
to be removed you either would have to wait the seven years for it to be removed from the first
day of delinquency or you can take the quicker route which is my route the dispute method with
my templates or you can just watch my other videos on collections and how to get a collection removed
but i want to just walk you through the process so if you see a charge off on your credit what you're
pretty much going to do is simply look at um first look at the date that it was first reported now
obviously if it's been longer than seven years you need to get it deleted and that's that's simple
um and we already know that but if it hasn't been more than seven years you can definitely
chart you can definitely challenge it and ask for full validation of that account and the person
that you would want to get the full validation from is going to be the credit bureaus now just to
recap the credit bureaus do not share information so if you have a charge off that is being reported
on three different credit reports then you have to send three different letters to the credit bureaus
so i want to make sure that we're clear on that if it's a charge off you're not
writing a letter to the creditors that is not how it works because they no longer have the account
they have sent it over to someone else and so you want to make sure that the person that
you dispute with is a person that works at the credit reporting agencies which is going to be
experian equifax and transunion so in your letter you're going to write the account information
which is going to be the account uh name in addition to the date that it was first reported
you can also include the amount and you're going to simply write in your letter that
you want to get full validation of this account including the originally signed
contracts with your signature and you want to specify that um and you want to also tell them
that if they cannot verify the account that they must remove the account according to
the fcra laws so we've talked about fcra laws we've talked about the fdcpa laws we've talked
about uh what to do if those laws are violated so i want to make sure that you always include a line
in your letters about the fcra laws when you're disputing with the credit bureaus um because it's
just reminding them that you know you're right right so once you get that information in your
letter um the next thing you want to do when you're mailing those letters please don't use like
the mail that you know that costs like 50 cents that's going to get lost in the mail and then it's
going to be a wasted trip to the post office what you want to do is make sure that you are using
signature delivery confirmation yeah it might cost an extra 10 bucks or so but ten bucks is nothing
compared to getting something the cost of getting something removed from your credit
or the cost of not removing it ten dollars is so worth it so you never want to just send a letter
without having that delivery signature confirmation on it because it's going to
also be proof that you started a dispute so whenever you send off that information
once they receive it at the credit bureaus they will send you a little card or a little slip in
the mail you'll get that back in the mail that shows who signed for it so you always want to
make a copy of that just in case um they don't you know correctly you know investigate it or
do a proper dispute or if it's beyond that 30-day window that they have to investigate it or dispute
it you want to have that as evidence in case you need to send a follow-up letter or if you need to
file a complaint with the cfpb and so i have a credit roadmap that kind of guides you through
what to do if an item comes back verified um and how important it is to carefully utilize the cfpb
as we know the cfpb stands for the consumer finance protection bureau
and they are like your big brother they are a consumer protection agency that um regularly
monitors and investigates not only the credit reporting bureaus but also the collection agencies
and other financial institutions anybody that deals with money um they are kind of like the
overseer that makes sure that consumers are not being taken advantage of so that's why it's so
important to to know what the cfpb is and to know um how to file a complaint and um
what i like what i did in my credit templates um in the package is not only did i put the templates
in there but i created pretty much a road map for where to start because you're going to get
there aren't going to be many different responses that you'll get from the credit bureaus after the
investigation is complete you're either going to get a letter that says it's been verified
you get a letter that requests additional information or requests you to uh like verify
your identity or you're going to get um there's a verification letter saying that it's verified
there's the id letter or there's the letter that says it's been deleted so it's going to
be one of three options but based on the feedback that they give you i did map out what you can do
and how you can respond and how you can use the cfpb as your point of escalation because sometimes
credit bureaus are stubborn and they don't actually do what they're supposed to do to verify
an account so that's why we have to escalate that to the cfpb and we have to you know we have
to be assertive in our consumer rights so just remember that if you're going to have a charge off
um and you're going to challenge it that you need to challenge it with the bureaus if that
does not work after multiple attempts and they're not properly investigating it and that's when you
want to escalate it to the cfpb so i hope that makes sense um anything that you don't understand
about that process let me know in the comments below i'm always happy to answer any questions
that you guys have um and until then happy credit building see you in the next video bye