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Edit: Sorry, I misunderstood part of your question before I answered the first time! Unfortunately paying an old debt like this does negatively impact your score. It's because once you pay it, it shows on your credit report as a recent delinquent debt (yup, still derogatory even though it's now paid in full), instead of an old delinquent debt. The more recent it is, the worse it is for your score. And yes, our credit system sucks because as you can see, it provides people with a disincentive for paying their debts. Did this debt go to a collection agency? If so, you might be able to easily dispute it and get rid of it a little later. You would need to wait at least a few months though, since you've already disputed this item once. When you dispute an item listed by a collection agency, they often can't or won't do what is necessary to prove the item is accurate, so they end up just deleting it from your reports! And sometimes this happens with the original creditor too. If you go this route, don't lie in your disputes and say "not mine". Just ask them to PROVE that all the details of the account listing are correct: dollar amount, account number, date of last activity, etc etc.

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creditrepairanddebtsolutions ...

by aplbtm83

5 months ago

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Once you pay the bill it will still show on your credit report as a paid collection, unless you can get the utility company to stop reporting it. You can call and ask them to stop reporting your account since you paid it. If they agree to stop reporting it, get the agreement in writing or else it will be on your credit file for 7 years.

by Craig- 5 months ago

Well you should have left the way it was. Paying after 3 years mean when they report it that you sent a payment it's gonna be on your credit file for another 7 years!

by Truth Teller- 5 months ago

According to a conversation with my uncle the other day (apparently he knows everything about credit & stuff) disputing again might help, but if they don't remove it you're pretty much screwed for a really long time... You have to use the "rest of your credit" to make up for it... (for example, do all those crazy "good credit-boosting-practices" to raise your score by 50 or 60 points so the 30 points off won't be such a big deal) The things to do: 1) Pay your credit cards & such down to about 10% of their limit 2) Pay them off if you can 3) Use credit cards to keep them active, but pay them off IN FULL before you even get a bill (before the billing cycle ends, so your bill will be 0) 4) Pay everything on time or early from now on 5) DO NOT close or open any accounts of any kind (credit-cards, that is) because closed accounts no longer report that you've been doing a good job of paying on time and new accounts can't report that either, so it hurts your score 6) If you have MS office, use Excel to set up your budget... if you don't know HOW to use it to set up a budget, just write what your bill/credit-card is in one square (we'll say column C) and then put how much you owe (in column D) and the interest rate (in column E) and the credit limit or what you have available (in column F) and the amount your monthly payment is right now with the amount owed (in column G) ... ... Do that for everything you have (every bill, loan, credit card, etc) THEN put a "totals" line at the bottom (write "TOTALS" in column C under all the lines of stuff) THEN in columns D, F, and G put "=sum(D1:D15)" (15 is an example, use whatever the numbered row of the last card or loan or bill is at) then hit "enter" and it'll tell you the total... replace "D" with "F" and "G" for the appropriate lines.. then go to the bottom of row E and do the same thing, but instead of "sum" use "average" and it'll tell you what the average interest rate you are paying is!!! ... ... ... Then the bottom of G is what goes out per month, subtract that from your paycheck (you can use "=1500-G15" where "1500" is however much you make in a month and "G15" is whatever number the total line is on column G) If you want help with this (the MS Excel thing) you can email me and I can help... Just tell me "how many" cards you have, "how many" bills you have, etc (DO NOT give out your financial information to anyone, period.) and I can set up a document with "samples" in it that have the same amount of loans, bills, etc and you can just replace that data with your own stuff... I did that for my parents)

by Max- 5 months ago

Uh, if you paid it but it was late, as it must have been if it was a negative on your credit report, it will still show as a late payment. They don't just remove it because it's now paid.

by Judy- 5 months ago

Сredit repair workеd fine to fix my credit. They disputed and removed lots of bad items from my credit report. I used this service - freecreditreport.hotusa.org

by Jimmy- 5 months ago