Welcome To Talk Finance

"One cannot get rid of his past; mistakes he did, no matter intentional or unintentional, they always obstruct your present decisions and never let you skip away.” Same is happening with me, and even after a resoluteness to resolve that, these mistakes are not letting me just walk away, they are chasing me where ever I go.

I live in Manhattan. Since year 2008, I have three charged off credit cards that I signed up 4 years back. They were from Citi Bank, Wells Fargo and Chase Bank. Due to some fiscal crises, I couldn't make up with their timely payments and after the procedures; these accounts were handed over to collection agencies.

I do not know, whether these collection agencies bided on those accounts or the banks just have a contract with them. I even doubt whether these collection agencies are legal to collect in my state or not?

• Now, the question that I want to ask here is, can I get rid of my bad credit history by making the pending payments?

• I do not want to talk to those collection phonies, so would you experts recommend ringing to the bank about this, I mean if I call up the bank, would they entertain my request or whether they will transfer my call to those phonies?

• I have heard a lot about pay-for-delete offer? What exactly is this?

Any help will be a great help.

True said by someone, “Cut your coat according to your cloth regardless of the vogue in market.” Even after being aware of things, we do make out of mind choices and later on repent on them. Something of same genre happened with me.

What happened?

I am Sam, a proud family member of Uncle Sam. It was all going great before the adversity knocked my door, I was having awesome credit history with my more than 15 accounts and my FICO rating was 782. Then happened the dreadful thing of my life, I met with an accident and lost my current job because had to stay out for more than 3 months from the job, resulted in my auto resignation. Just because of that, I was left with no choice other than swiping my CCs for meeting my expenses.

Current situation:

Now, to the date what I owe is:

• $7650 – Bank of America Credit Card

• $7850 – U.S Bank's Card

• $17,500 – from other cards

Questions:

I received an offer from a rep of BOA about settling the balance at 30% (no written confirmation, was just a telephonic conversation),

I inquired about the same settlement offer from US Bank. They informed me that I do not qualify for the settlement program but they have a US Bank hardship program, which settles the balance at a reduced rate of 7.4% and $109 per month.

So, I was wondering, should I accept these offers, or is there any other alternative I should wait for?