VRoman0

 1. Start a free trial on experian or equafax and get a compelete credit report. It will show the ammount you owe, who you owe it to, and how to contact your creditors. You will have to cancel the membership in a week or so to avoid charges. 2. A complete credit report will also show which companies requested your credit report and how to contact them. If you give them a call they will let you know exactly who pulled your report and put an inquiry on it and they will provid you with the name and number for that particular person. Soft inquries don't matter and lots of companies check your report before they send you a letter with some sort of an offer.

Pay off and then file a dispute with all the credit score agencies. Once the collection is paid they will remove it from your report. However, the original account that went to collections will remain as negative on your report (if it was showing up on your report in the first place). Having one negative account is way better than having two even if they are both there for the same reason. If the original account was not reported (like my gym membership) than after the collection account is deleted noone will ever know if something bad happend to you.

A simple answer: having 0% balance hurts your score. To get the highest score possible you need 1-10% balance on all your credit cards.

My wife bought a brand new car with a score of 520. No money down, no money out of pocket.

Any store account will be shown as credit card here.  Check your transunion report.

You have to contact the companies that put inquiries on your report and dispute it with them . Otherwize just wait 2 years and inquiries will go away on their own. PS. Look at your report closely, and make sure that you don't have any inquiries that are pulled periodically without your permission, like one mortage bank did to me.