One thing you should keep in mind are your plans over the next while though. It may not be an isntant fix for your credit score to pay your old R9 off, but an unpaid R9 will essentially prevent you from doing anything requiring credit until they are removed. Credit score is a big factor so a lower score is going to limit your options no matter what, but your options with closed R9's and other wise good credit are MUCH better vs leaving unpaid R9s. For A lenders credit score may be that be-all-end-all decision maker, however, this isn't the case across the board, so that's just something to consider. If you're likely to need credit at some point before the R9 would fall off the bureau on its own, you may want to reconsider simply not paying...

Thanks.
Now I have a budget and a payment plan Im paying down my current credit card to get it to 20% instead of 80% and my 2 loand are active and current up to date. Guess time will do the rest.
Learning and moving forward!

you could pay everything in full tomorrow....would not change a thing re score.
Any R9's are there for 6 years.
Concentrate on your active debts you have now in good standing and keep them that way....1 laate payment kills it.
Keep your cards down to about 15-20 percent of available credit and current.
Ride it out till the bad ones drop off. Anyone who tells you they can fix it now are lying to you.

Scouring the internet the last few days trying to find ways to "improve" my credit score. I have my credit reports. The only real errors are in my name or former addresses but the facts of the debts are correct.

Some websites say pay it off. Fine I would like to do that but then Im stumped on:
1. How do I know that if I pay the collection agency they will notify the CRA?
2. I started a pre-payment to one agency but they never acknowledged my demand for receipts of payment so after 4 months of repaying I stopped. To this day there is no record that I paid them and the debt still shows as much as ever on my credit report - so bit worried about being burned again.
3. Other sites say don't pay the old debt unless morally you want to because it will not change your credit score and in fact might actually reactivate it with a more current date and negatively impact your score more.

I'm baffled. I just want to know what I can do now to improve my score. Should I just focus on what I'm doing now. Paying down my active live debt, loans and keep balances on a credit card low and just move forwad and let the old debt fall off after 6-7 years or try to tackle chasing collection agencies to settle debt that's past the 2 year statute in Ontario?

A year ago my score was 490 and today its 545 .. not where I want it but it seems to be going up - slowly - any tips?