How to Repair Bad Credit on Gas Cards
Gas cards are a type of revolving credit account. They are typically branded to a certain type of gasoline and can be used to charge purchases at affiliated gas stations. Liz Pulliam Weston, a columnist for the MSN Money website, explains that they are easier to get than general cards like Visa or MasterCard, so they are often used to build new credit or rebuild a good history after financial problems like a string of delinquent accounts, court judgments or bankruptcy. Gas cards cause bad credit if you do not pay them as agreed, but you can repair the damage.
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Instructions
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Pay any delinquent amounts on your gas credit card, the MyFICO credit score website advises. Your account payment records have the biggest influence on your score, accounting for 35 percent of the total number. You start to repair the damage when you get the payments current.
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Send all future gas card payments with enough time to ensure they are received and credited to your account before the due date. The MyFICO site warns that every late payment chips away at your credit score, but on-time payments rebuild it.
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Hide your gas card until you pay down the balance. You hurt your credit when you spend all the way up to your credit limit, especially if you have maxed out other cards in addition to your gas account. Your bad credit improves when you pay down the owed balance, according to the MyFICO site.
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Check your gas card account on your TransUnion, Equifax and Experian credit bureau reports to make sure the data is accurate. On-time payments and a shrinking balance do not help you if the bureaus are still reporting the account as delinquent. The Federal Trade Commission website advises that you can get free credit reports yearly from annualcreditreport.com and challenge any mistakes you find in them. Check each report separately because each bureau might have different information. Report mistakes and ask for an investigation. The bureaus must handle your dispute within 30 days, according to the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
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Tips & Warnings
You do not automatically repair bad credit by paying off your gas card if it went to a collection agency. Steve Bucci, the Debt Adviser columnist for the Bankrate.com website, warns that it simply shows as a paid charge-off or collection account. Negotiate a change in credit report status to paid in full, or complete erasure of the entry, as part of your agreement to pay the account. Either of these options repairs the damage.
