When you get a charge off on your credit report it will negatively impact your credit score. This comes about when an account becomes delinquent and no payment is made for 6 months.

An effective way of erasing a charge off from you credit history is to dispute the listing. This is accomplished by sending a credit repair letter to the credit bureaus.

In your credit repair letter you should explain why the listing is incorrect. For example the account has never been paid late, it's not your account or information is wrong.

Our credit system is flawed and you are assumed guilty until you can prove otherwise. It is common for incorrect information to show on your credit history.

Congress passed the Fair Credit Reporting Act in response to complaints of inaccurate information being reported by the credit bureaus. This legislation simply says that if a listing can not be verified then the credit bureau must remove it from your credit report.

It is also common for one charge off account to become many negative listings and ruin your credit score. Let me explain what happens to an account once it is charged off.

The original lender will take the outstanding debt and will sell it to a collection agency. This collection agency will try to collect on the debt. If they are unsuccessful they will be able to create a negative listing on your credit report.

Then the collection agency will turn around and sell your debt to another collection agency. This new collection agency will be able to report a negative listing if they are unsuccessful in collecting payment.

This process will continue dependent upon the size of the account. So one account can become many negative listings and ruin your credit score.

With a number of negative listings it will ruin your credit score. This will also make it hard to be approved for any new credit lines.

In sum I encourage you to dispute the listing before you make payment. I would do this because making payment does not guarantee the listing will be removed.