Lots of credit reporting cleanup questions

I am looking to buy my first house now that I have graduated from college and got a job, so I got my credit reports to see if there was anything negative. Between the three there are three negative remarks, two of them are the same item but on different reports. This is a shame because I always strive to pay all my bills.

1. A credit card I don't remember ever having has a single late payment of 60 days in 2001, of $140. The late payment was around the time I moved, so it is possible that they never sent the bill to my forwarding address, but I never even heard of the CC company. According to the report, the account was paid in full and then closed.

I already disputed it claiming that I never had the account. This is the one and only negative item on Report #1 and there is no record of it on the other reports.

2. An old hospital bill for $15. I checked into the emergency room of a hospital in 2001 while on vacation, my insurance paid the whole cost but the copay. I was only 19 at the time and had no clue even what a copay was, it was the first time I ever had been in a hospital.

This damn hospital never sent me a single bill me for the copay, or even told me as I was leaving out to pay the copay (which I could have with the cash in my wallet!), they just turned it over to a collection agency, so now two of my credit reports show a collection, a big negative.

I am furious at the hospital for ruining my credit over $15, especially since they never sent me any bill. The two credit reports with this info have my fico score ~40 points lower than the one that doesn't list it. What should I do about this? I am thinking I should just deny I ever entered the hospital, for $15 they may not even try to follow up. Obviously I'd be happy to pay that small amount to remove the collection, but the credit report website said that paying a bill that is in collection won't remove the negative mark from the record, so my best option seems to be to lie and deny that I was ever there, or else lie and say I paid in cash. Will this work? Does the hospital have the power to remove the collection from my report if they admit they made a mistake and never billed me?

3. I have a lot of credit card accounts from my first year of college when they were all over campus giving away free toys and t-shirts if you signed up. I only actually activated one of them, but there are 15 to 20 listings on all my reports that just say "account closed" and "maximum balance 0" and have no payment info.

Do these hurt my credit worthyness? Can I get them removed by denying I ever had them? These are from 1999 and 2000.

I have no problem with lying about any of this stuff since I hate the hospital and credit card companies in general, especially the types that agressively try to hook 18-year-old freshmen on free easy credit!

[Ladynred]

Call the hospital and see if they'll accept your payment. If they will accept it, then negotiate with them for what is called 'pay for deletion' - it CAN be done and IS done. While the CRA sites say that paying a collection won't help - and they are right - what they DON"T tell you is that the information CAN be removed by the entity that put it there in the first place. You promise to pay in full and in return, they delete the negative line from your reports - and don't let them tell you they can't do that - they can.

You can first try to dispute it as 'not mine' - but say something like - 'I have no recollection of any such account # xxx to xxxxxx hospital dated xx/xx/xx - you have to put in specifics or they'll ignore it as too general. It *might* work - it might not.

You can do the same thing with the credit card entry - dispute as "not mine" and give the details. You might get lucky. It could also come back as 'verfied' , then you have to have another plan of attack.

I suggest you go over to [url]www.creditboards.com[/url] and start reading the newbie threads and the boards. They are the gurus of repair.