I have 30-45 days and I have negotiated on some of my accounts already.

No it should improve it if you have negotiated to have your payments reported onto your credit score. Also try not to pull your credit report too often as that lowers points, and see about using one credit card and paying it down exclusively every single month. That can raise your score a few points a month.

Very bad answers here! Only newport38 knows what they are talking about.

Let me explain how the "game" works.

When a negative item is first placed on your credit report, it is considered a recent activity. The formula used to calculate your credit scores gives those items more importance then older items, and they have a very bad effect.

As time goes by, the report gets older and it becomes less important. After around 5 years it only has a minor effect on your credit.

When you pay off an old debt, the creditor is NOT required to delete any of the negative information. He is only required to show that the debt is now "paid" or "settled"....therefore you think it's helping thing. But it isn't.

To make it even worse, when they report the new status, it now changes the status of this item to recent again, and your credit score will actually drop!

Therefore, what you need to do is negotiate a settlement with the creditor, and demand that they agree IN WRITING to DELETE the entry from your credit reports. Anything else is only going to hurt your score.

30-45 days is a very short time to improve your credit scores. Be sure you factor this into your negotiations, and demand that they report this immediately to the agencies.

[Qtip]

Originally Posted by adrgal

I have 30-45 days and I have negotiated on some of my accounts already.

Some basic things will increase your score in a short period of time. Look for any discrepancies or errors on your credit file then dispute the offending trade lines.

If you have allot of hard inquiries, you can dispute this off on equifax, transunion and Experian are a different beast when it comes to disputing inquiries but Equifax will usually delete the disputed inquiries the same day.