I Need Help Cleaning this Up!

[shaneham]

My student loan was given to Van Ru Credit Corporation by the Department of Education in 1997

I did not negotiate much with the CA because I was naive and trusted them.

They accepted a short payoff on the account and said they would Change the condition of the loan to (Paid). I thought this was good :cry:

A year later I pull my report (3 in 1) and the only thing different was that Experian was changed from “Derogatory” to “Open (Paid)”. The pay status still says “Collection/Charge off” and they added a remark as follows:

Account legally paid in full for less than the full balance. Account seriously past due/account assigned to attorney, collection agency, or credit grantor’s internal collection department. Account legally paid in full for less than the full balance. Collection account Placed for collection Settlement accepted on this account.

:twisted: (Van Ru is also reported twice for some reason). So I have 3 bad Histories with my Student loan now.

Now for paying 9K out of pocket, they sure left my CBR in bad shape.

I did call the Department of Education and they did accept debt settled in full. They sent me a letter that does state that.

How can I get this cleaned up? My debt is settled but my CBR looks horrible.

I don’t even know where the start.

Any and all help would be deeply appreciated

[stellblu]

Hope I'm not stepping on any toes here, cause I mostly just read (lurk lurk lurk!!) but I just managed to get the mess of my student loans cleaned up :) It's been an ongoing process since 1997,hehe.

Firstly, was the Dept. of Ed. the original lender? Or were they sent from a lender, to a guarantor, to Dept. of Ed., etc?

Student loans are a pain to fix. I defaulted on them, then defaulted when they were sent to the guarantor, then finally consolidated through Dept. of Ed, but it left my credit destroyed. They say they'll fix the errors, but in doing so, duplicate accounts get added, amounts change, etc.

I discovered disputing them did no good. Calling Dept. of Ed was pointless; they just sent me my payment history,lol. What I finally did was send letters to both the original lender and the guarantor explaining the mess that was showing up (again, calling them was fruitless...from the original lender, "the account is closed, they can do nothing"; from the guarantor, "we have updated that.will send another update"...which turned into another duplicate!) and how it should be reporting, and a week later, it was fixed.

Now,initially, the accounts read paid collection, and other assorted derog. commentary, zero balance. After they screwed with the status enough, and I got fed up and disgusted, I bypassed dealing with the customer reps that can do nothing, and got contact info from Planet Feedback. I wrote them strongly worded letters (lol....Citibank,I threatened to sue cause I was so sick of the nonsense!), and they were able to finally clear the mess up.

I don't know the full situation, but I do know that 1) student loans don't budge easily and 2) you have to deal with people that have had more than 2 weeks of training that are given a phone and a script :P

They will most probably tell you that yes,it was paid, but not to them; it was a collection, after all. And well,they're right. I couldn't deny that to them,either. But, I found "little" things that were wrong on all of the accounts, and each time they messed it up, I contacted them. Until I was finally sick enough of them messing it up. Then, I was able to have had a history of them messing these accounts up, and when I brought it to the "big mucky-mucks" pleading with them to REPORT IT ACCURATELY!!, they immediately replied, and did more than I expected. They removed all the late pays, and derogs, updated to pays as agreed/paid in full/ account closed, and reported the accurate dates. I also FINALLY have the actual number of accounts, no more duplicates :)

My advice: work it, argue the little things, let them update, demand copies, and then get 'em when they continue to screw up :P Cause, they will. I don't know of anyone who has ever NOT had a problem with student loan reporting...and they do keep impeccable records!