Charged-off CC - Pay in full or settle? R9 to Rx?

[phoenyx]

I'm filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy. I am married, however none of my debt is in my wife's name whatsoever. She is not filing bankruptcy.

My wife had a credit card in her name only, which was charged off and sold to a collection agency with a balance of $750.47.

We just got enough money to actually pay off her credit card balance. The collection agency offered a 70% settlement on the balance, and just now accepted my 44% counteroffer. No money has transferred place (I'm waiting to receive the acceptance of the counteroffer via fax, first.)


QUESTION: The credit card is currently being reported as R9. I'm wondering what code "paid, settled" is. Does it stay as R9, with a comment? Or change to something like R7? If we were to pay in full rather than settle what code would that be?

QUESTION: In a previous post of mine, people responded that "charged off/paid in full" and "charged off/settled" would have the same impact on credit reports. However, I've seen so many sites on the internet that say the "paid in full" version is better for a credit report. Anyone know for sure? If paid in full is much better I'd rather pay the extra $420.....

QUESTION: Has anyone had luck getting a collection agency to code the account better than it really is, or remove the charge off from her record? I went two supervisors up, and they said they can't do it even if we pay in full since they aren't the paper holder. The paper holder is someone called FFPM Carmel Holdings, who they couldn't give me a phone number for. Should I try contacting them to get her a better credit report or should I pay the $330, save $420, and don't look back?

[Bandit]

The best thing I can relate this to is DMV. I had a ticket some 25 years ago that I went to court for & was dismissed yet somehow it got through to my DMV report anyway when I moved to a different state. it gave me points against me in the new state that I was never charged with in the old state. It was a big mess because no one understood what had happened. I wanted that off my DMV report & it took me 3 months to finally get through to the only person who could change it. Even then, she was very reluctant & I had to show proof of court & what really happened passing papers in the mail.

If I were going to pay it to get a better score/report then I would also want to find out first, who is able to correct it & show exactly what happened.

I don't know the answer directly to all those questions because it seems like you are filing but want to straigthen this out for someone else who is not filing, where there are some attorneys who follow through with the entire clean up of credit reports in BK.

I understand that DMV & credit report is not the same thing but the effects of something not true on any report can be a problem later.
This is not advice but the best I can relate to for what I would do.