Paying off the debts will not undo the damage of your late pays. The late pays will stay on your credit report for 7 years. This info cannot be removed..If these cards have not yet completely defaulted/charged off, then you for sure need to pay them back to prevent this. A charge off is a disaster for your credit rating…do whatever you can to prevent this from occurring. Basically, if you paid the past due amounts, you would not be improving your credit rating, but you would be preventing further damage. It will take at least 2 years of on-time payments to improve your credit score.

If these cards have already completely defaulted/charged off…then the damage to your credit has been done and paying the debts back after a charge off will not repair your credit rating.Your credit will not go up drastically just because you pay down the amount you owe. The damage has been done by letting these cards go into arrears. Are the accounts even open still or have they been charged off?

No, they will NOT take off the late payments on your credit history. You DID pay late! If we could pick and choose which entries we want on our credit report, we would all have scores above 750! Those derogatory items will stay on your report for 7.5 years.

The ultimate resource for consumer credit counseling services

Tags | get out of debt