Hi my name is Aazim Sharp founder of leaf credit solutions we're a national credit repair
organization I've spent the last five years helping individuals repair credit
I've successfully removed over fifteen thousand negative items from clients
credit reports items such as collections foreclosures judgments tax liens medical
bills you name it but today I'm here to help you with some information that I
think would be very very valuable if you're looking to repair your credit
okay so today with a with a
the pitfalls of paying off collection accounts well basically what we have is
a five-part series five mistakes to avoid when fixing your credit okay so
today what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through mistake number one don't
pay off your collection accounts now I know it may sound crazy information that
you're like don't pay off your collection accounts but what I'm going
to say that you is going to make a whole lot of sense and it's going to save you
a whole lot of money and in headaches in the long run okay so in this video we're
going to go over why you shouldn't just pay off your collection accounts okay
mistake number one don't pay off your collection accounts why is that
important there's a lot of things that can happen when you do that information
that the collection agencies don't make you aware of they just call you the
harass you and you automatically arrange make payment arrangements but I'm going
to show you the correct way to do it how to successfully get these accounts
removed from your credit report and save yourself a lot of money in the long run
and this these are all things done according to federal law things that
we've done and strategies that we implement to help our clients okay so
every debt has a statute of limitations Sol what we call the statute of
limitations and this varies according to the state that you live in okay so if
you live in the state of Georgia the statute of limitations may be different
from the state of New Jersey so you need to check the statue of limitations in
your particular state in the future we'll be posting that information or on
our website leave credit Solutions calm but you can check the statue of
limitations in use in your state so you know it goes according to where you live
and also where you actually acquire the debt okay so it's important to know well
what is the statue of limitations the statue of limitations is actually the
timeframe of how long by law a creditor can collect a debt
you so you must check your state laws credit cards and contract debt as we
have stated here are four years in most states mortgages are seven years in a
lot of states so they have that amount of time to legally collect a debt from
you now we're going to jump into some very very important information and I
want you to pay close attention because this information can help save you a lot
of money and we're going to show you the right way in the wrong way to go about
taking care of collections okay so making a partial payment on on a debt it
actually extends the debt for another four years okay so that's not something
what you want to do if you're not going to pay it off in full arm you know don't
bother with if you make payment arrangements you can actually extend the
debt for another four years okay so in that also paying a collection it
actually extends the statute of limitations and the date of last
activity on the account I'm going to give you a perfect example of this now
let's say you have a chase car and a chase car goes into collections three
three years ago I went into collections the statue of limitations will expire
and actually one year now you make a small payment today because you got a
call from a collection agency they harass you to make a payment and now you
have the have the reset the statute of limitations for another four years so
now they can legally come after you for another four years okay and these are
just one of the things with collection accounts and you can actually extend it
for another seven years oftentimes I look at the clients credit report and
I'll see that they pay the collection account maybe a year or two ago and
they're saying why is this still on my credit well just because you pay a
collection the creditor is not obligated to remove that but I'm going to show you
how you can actually if you do decide to pay it get it removed permanently from
your credit record and there's also ways that you may not have to pay that
election and we'll get into the the laws pertaining to that because you want to
make sure that that creditor can actually validate the debt okay so how
can you avoid these pitfalls this is you know we went into what the problem is
now I'm going to give you the solution number one you want to force the debt
collector to validate the debt what do I mean by this let's say you have a
collection agency and they look they're located in Houston Texas and you live in
the state of New Jersey that collection agency needs to be licensed to do
business in the state of New Jersey now you're not going to know to ask for that
you know in the past you would have known to ask for that when they contact
you you would have just automatically made a payment arrangements or you would
have ignored the phone call but they have to be licensed to do business in
the state that you live in and most of them are not they they get license in
one state because it's it's expensive for them to be licensed in multiple
states and they also know that when they contact you to consuming you're not
going to know to ask for that you know and you want these things in writing you
don't just want to say over the phone hey are you licensed to do business in
my state then you know you you you a lot of them just they're not so you have
rights as a consumer in order for them to be able to collect this debt that
they purchase from the original creditor they have to follow the laws and then
also the second thing that you can do here is a pay to delete letter so let's
say you're not trying to dispute the account you want the account totally
removed from your credit report you're trying to qualify for a mortgage in the
next 60 days or so and you don't have the time the dispute to go back and
forth okay let's say you owe $500 on an account the account is in collection
status you can do what we call a paid to delete letter sent to that creditor they
can sign off on it of course someone has to you know sign
off on it in the come within the company and that's simply they're stating that
they would agree to remove that from your credit report in exchange for
payment that's a paid to delete letter we have samples of this we can forward
one to this is very very important because you
don't want it showing on your credit report as a paid collection or settle
for less than full amount oftentimes you get creditors that will agree to take
less and still remove it from your credit report so let's say you had a
judgment for $500 and you decided that you were going to pay them 250 if they
agree to that in exchange for them removing it from your credit report
because you don't want it showing as a paid collection or settle for less than
full amount because what's going to happen is when they go to update that
date of last activity on that account it actually is going to lower your credit
scores so there's a right way and a wrong way to go about taking care of a
collection account one you want to make sure that the creditor can actually
validate or verify the debt you can ask for original signatures documentation
and if they can't provide those things then by law according to the Fair Credit
Reporting Act they have to remove it from your credit report this is very
very important we save our clients thousands of dollars because we know how
to implement the law in each case so you want to know what your rights are that's
very very important it'll save you a lot of money and you can also schedule a
free credit consultation with us there's no obligation you know if this is not
something that you want to do on your own you can contact a company like ours
and we'd be willing to help you you can schedule a free credit
consultation where you'll get a free copy of your credit report we'll give
you some very valuable information that you can use for the rest of your life
you know there's a lot of things that people just don't know about credit and
know what their rights are they think that if something is on a credit report
they're just supposed to take care of it or pay it and it has to stay on their
credit report but that's very far from the truth all of everything that I'm
giving you is backed up by facts and by federal law so again you can schedule a
free consultation with us we'd be more than happy to help you out I've helped
out probably thousands of individuals now and helped them improve their credit
so you know but if we can anything that we can do
on a complimentary basis we're willing to help as many people as we possibly
can again my name is Azam sharp with leaf credit solutions stay in touch and
we'll be coming at you with some more great and resourceful information