Incorrect Balances/Charge-Offs

3 of my credit cards that were included in my bankruptcy filing, which was discharged in '03 all shows as "Charge-Offs, written as bad debt". They all still show balances, and 2 show high past due amounts.

I am not sure what dates are relevant...one looks like this:

Date Opened Oct 95
Date of Last Activity July 02
Date Paid Out July 02
Date Closed Nov 04
Description: purchased by another lender

Last report on November,2004
This particular one shows 0 balance, 0 past due, but "charged off as bad debt"

Another looks like this:

Date Opened -Feb 94
Date of Last -Activity July 02
Date Paid Out - Not on Record
Date Closed -Apr01
Description: -Profit and Loss write off
Last Report on February, 2003
Balance $16,966
Current Status - charged off as bad debt
Past Due Amount - $2,489


I double checked my bankruptcy papers and my list of creditors that was filed....both of these accounts (and their account numbers) were in my filing.

Once i made the decision to file and saw an attorney, he said to direct any credit calls/collection calls to his office, which I did. So all my cr cards knew i was going to file BK....could they have sold the accounts and/or charged them off when they were notified of the BK (before it was even discharged) - just so that these statuses could appear in my credit reports?

Does this mean they really werent included in my BK? (Though never once after discharge did they contact me or send me bills for the past due amounts...)

BayBreeze,

It is very common for the credit card companies to not report correctly after a BK. My BK was just discharged on 2/10 and they are showing one of mine accounts as charged off instead of included in bk. You need to contact the credit bureas and notify them that this is incorrect and request correction.

-If the account was charged off before the bankruptcy was filed it will still show up on the credit report as a charge off and would be correct

-If the account was not charged off before the bankruptcy was filed the account show showed included in bankruptcy and list a 0 balance

The accounts were discharged, regardless of who owned them. If this is the first time you've started to clean up your report after BK, don't be surprised that the creditors didn't update to show $0 owed due to bankruptcy. Write letters to the bureaus, that should not be difficult to get corrected.

Edited to fix odd typo!

This is the first time i've ever even checked my credit reports. It's just amazing to me how all this exists out there and how much it all affects people. I never even heard of credit agencies & scoring & FICO scores until last year sometime when I saw few TV shows that talked about it. In just a few weeks recently in this forum and other BK and credit forums, I've learned sooooooooo much about all this....i still cant believe all the shenanigans that go on. Sometimes it just seems that the big companies are in cahoots with all of each other...to do what they can against consumers in order to charge them the most they can interest, fees, rates, etc...I wonder if the CRA's get any compensations perks from creditors to report in such a manner that is derogatory so they can charge sky high rates...

The bureaus report what is given to them. That doesn't mean that they make the dispute process easy, but they are not involved in what gets reported.