Paid off derogatory accounts & credit score went down!

[Sonia R]

I paid off all the derogatory accounts on my credit report and my FICO went down 30 points. Does anyone know why?

[Jacqui W Mg]

Contact the 3 credit reporting agencies and ask them why.

[Terri]

Did you just pay them off right before your fico score went down? There's sometimes some lag time before your fico score descent is stopped, and goes in a more postive direction. Also, if you have new credit inquiries, have opened new accounts, etc - those could be the items driving your score down. To see it go up, a pattern needs time to be established.

[Gammy]

sometimes it comes back to you when you try to do the right thing and pay off old bills. Some creditors will make the bill "appear new" once there has been some type of contact made. Even if a bill is five years old and a collection agency buys it from the creditor and the collection agency calls you making contact then they can put it right back on your credit as if its a new failure to pay. Thus being on there for seven more years or if you pay the collection agency then its seven years showing paid.Trying to do the right thing is not always best. Do some research and hopefully I am wrong. But creditors have been known to do some things that should be questioned when it comes to consumers credit reports.

[AntiPlastic]

My personal experience involved having to retrieve copies of cleared checks to prove payment, twice on the same collection account. Both times I was insistent that the payment be posted to credit rating bureaus, but it appeared to be fixed first, then I had to repeat the process
When I get my latest credit report, I will see if it still appears correctly

[chane]

Paying off negative accounts does not make them positive. It simply makes them current negative accounts.

What you've done buy paying these accounts off is made them look like they just happened which hurts your scores tremendously.

Make sure you always ask for a deletion or a change of status to "pays as agreed" from the creditor BEFORE you pay off any derogatory accounts next time!

Sample Pay For Delete Letters

You can still try to get them deleted and/or updated, but it won't be as easy. Dispute them with the credit bureaus.