Page 36 - Winning The Credit Game Bundle (CK Patrick)

24 THE CREDIT GAME

amount; others, for various reasons, may elect not to do so even if you
owe them thousands of dollars.
If a negative remark appears on your credit report, sometimes you
can quickly raise your credit score by paying that bill. But first, you
will need to call the creditor and specifically request that they report a
change in your payment status to the credit bureau. Be sure to get this
agreement in writing! Once they agree, if you get the payment status
reported properly, it is as though your late payment or nonpayment
never happened.
If you can catch a late bill while it’s still in collections before it hits
your credit file, that’s even better. In that case, you can sometimes
negotiate payment for pennies on the dollar!
Now, you’ve solved the nonpayment problem, so that loss is
removed from your scorecard and replaced by a win. We will cover
exactly how to make this happen later in this book.
Since the only way to be certain which bills are harming your credit
score is to look at your credit report, let’s investigate how to do that
next.