This is a little off topic, but here it goes...
For anyone with bad credit or trying to repair credit, there is a really easy step that will go a long way to redemption. Each year, you can get a free credit report from each one of the three credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion). Go to annualcreditreport.com (other websites require you to pay, this one is the free one) to get started. You'll need to do this trick to each of the three to fully benefit from this.
The trick: dispute everything. When you get your report, there will be an option to dispute any of the negative hits to your credit. In most instances, you will get a list of disputable items like: "I don't agree with the high balance listed" or "I don't agree with the start date of the account." Typically you can choose a few different options per negative hit.
The companies have 45 days to prove whatever option(s) you've disputed. If they can't, the negative hit gets removed from your report (read: you don't owe anything!). Since a lot of bad credit has already been charged off/sold to a collection agency, it's often the case that the new account holder didn't quite get all of the "files" for the account.
You might need to wait a few months to see the postive effect, but it will come. Of the 9 bad debts I disputed, only one was not succesfully removed via this method. They sent me a letter saying something like "we understand you don't agree with [insert dispute reason]...we'd like to talk to you about it." Three months later I was flooded with credit card applications. I got a few 0% APR cards and tossed the others...you don't want to fall back in to bad habits 