Correcting Credit Report Funny Business

[RetireAbroadAt35]

I recently found out one of my two credit cards has an absurdly low limit for retail purchases.  I ordered a credit report from Experian to investigate (which I had to do by mail since for some reason they don't have any accurate credit info on me).

I learned:

• Neither of my two credit cards appear on the report.  Kind of annoying that I've held the same two cards for years to have a continuous history.
• Two medical bills that were settled 5 years ago appear as negative accounts "in collections".
• One medical bill that was also settled 5 years ago appears as a negative account "Paid, closed".

I'd like to correct the record and show that I am, in fact, not a credit deadbeat.  I contacted the attorney that settled all my bills from that accident and they provided me with a letter and a copy of a check that they sent the creditors which essentially says "this check shall reflect full & final payment" for each of the three bills.  The amounts are different from what appears on my credit report because the attorney negotiated the amounts down.

• How do I get my credit cards to report my accounts in good standing to the credit bureaus?
• What do I do about the medical bills?  Do I "dispute" them with Experian?  Go directly to the creditors?  To my knowledge, they were settled before anything went to collections, so the whole thing seems like a mistake to me.

[nanu]

No clue about the medical bills, but as for the credit cards - they might not appear on Experian's report, but they might appear on another bureau's report (Transunion, Equifax).
Not all banks/credit cards issuers report to all credit bureaus. You can try asking them nicely to report to Experian if they don't, but I wouldn't count on it (though I've never tried it myself).
You could pull the report from Transunion and/or Equifax to compare the information they have, which you can do once a year for free (as you probably know by now).

Also, you can try registering for creditkarma.com to see what information Transunion and Equifax have on you - the credit score they give is not your "real" credit score (that doesn't exactly exist even... but that's a whole other discussion), but you should be able to see what credit cards they have on file for you.

[RetireAbroadAt35]

No clue about the medical bills, but as for the credit cards - they might not appear on Experian's report, but they might appear on another bureau's report (Transunion, Equifax).

They don't.  As far as the credit bureau cartels are concerned I have no recent credit history.  Just some (falsely) reported negative accounts.

I know there are some tricks to correcting this stuff.  I'll do some googlin' and see what I can figure out.