Cut your CRAP One credit cards, and be sure to spit on them too. I would definetely close those accounts. I would start with some new credit cards. You should not pay an annual fee. If your still a student, try getting a student credit card. CRAP one is a horrible company. I once had a CRAP one card, and started with $500 limit, 3 years later I left with a $500 limit. While I was getting 25k limit from AMEX. Go to CREDITBOARDS.com and see how much everybody hates CRAP ONE!

mgersen said:Capital One doesn't report credit limits to credit bureaus. So the low CL won't be hurting your score. The age of the account will help. Cancel if they won't convert it to a no-annual fee card, but otherwise keep the account open, because the longer credit history will help you. Just keep the account open, even if you never use it. Leave the card in your drawer or something. Even years from now, keeping this account open will help your credit score, because of the benefit of aging your accounts on your credit file --- even if you never use that card again.

The collections account is certainly killing your credit score, even if you have paid off the obligation in full.

You should go to www.annualcreditreport.com and get copies of all your credit reports (it's free). Then, dispute any negative information. There's a significant chance that it will get deleted.

www.creditinfocenter.com is a great resource for credit repair.

You also might want to negatiate with the collection agency to get them not to report the account to credit bureaus.

So would using a capital one card build credit (effectively) since it doesn't report credit limits to the credit bureaus? If C1 doesn't report the CLs, then I'm asuming its safe to go pass 50% of the CL and have no repercussions for that. The only thing it would do to help your credit would be aging your credit report, correct? So wouldn't using a credit card that reported the CL be better for the credit report? What's up with low CL hurting credit anyways

Is it better to pay off account balances before you are billed then (since the balance would show up as zero in the Credit Report), or is it better to pay it off after you are billed?

P.S. Does anyone know how often C1 reports you to the three credit bureaus? THanks so much