Can one negative item show up twice on your credit report?

I am trying to fix some of the stupid things I have done in my life. One of the things is that I have a ring I bought for my ex wife that went unpaid, and eventually charged off.

Knowing that I need to fix this, I am interested in trying to pay this debt off. The company that I financed this ring with went bankrupt, and I presume my account was assumed by another company.

Anyway, when I pulled my credit report, it shows I have 2 separate negative items...one with the original company, and again with the company that assumed it. Is this right? Can I be "doulbe whammied" for one debt?

My second question is how do I go about getting one of them removed from my credit report? Do I need to dispute this with the credit bureaus?

You are exactly correct.

What you need to do is send a letter to the which ever credit reporting company you got your credit report from, TransUnion, Experian, Equafax ...

You have to bombard them with consistant letters (just make copies of the same letter) and mail them to the credit bureau's every 15 to 30 days ... do this religiously.

By law the company that or creditor that put the negative data on your report MUST respond to your dispute within 5 working days. If the deadline is not met, the item(s) are then removed from your credit report.

Now, don't expect to see it drop off automatically ... it might take a month or so to disappear.

But you MUST bombard them with your dispute letter and dont stop until you get what you want.

The dispute letter can be as simple as:

"I hereby dispute the item listed under (there will be a number assigned to it and the name of the company who is reporting) as I do not owe this money."

It doesnt matter if you owe or not ... dispute it anyway.

As far as paying a debt that has been written off. Save your money because this company has all ready claimed the loss on their taxes and have reduced the amount of taxes due/or income earned. Dont send them any money ... otherwise they will have double dipped the system.

This is easy to do ... but you have to BOMBARD the credit reporting company with letters. Believe me they will get tired of your mail and want to get you out of their hair.

Also, one of the biggest things that will make your credit score go down is INQUIRIES. Do not, repeat, DO NOT continue filling out request that utilizes credit or your SSN number. Everytime someone runs your SSN to look at your credit you drop in points. Fact, when you are logging in to look at your credit ... you are lowering your score and are not even aware of it. DO NOT RUN YOUR SSN FOR ANYTHING UNLESS YOU ARE CERTAIN THAT YOU WANT TO PURCHASE SOMETHING. This is soooooooo important.

BOMBARD them with letters and stay off your credit report for awhile. It will fix itself if you just give them hell. Dont send money --- send letters!

Sorry, but that's just the way the system works.

Even if the original company had not gone out of business, you still would have taken 2 hits. One for the original debt and one for the collection activity.

wow i did not know that. that is crazy.