What does charged off account mean?

A charged off account means that the original creditor has given up on collecting the money from you so your credit account to a debt collection company.

When a credit account has been charged off, that means that the original creditor, i.e. a bank or financier, has given up on collecting the money to you, so they sell the debt to a debt collection company for so much on the dollar.

So they lose very little money, and then the debt collection company is responsible for collecting that debt from you by whatever means necessary. Be forewarned, once a debt is charged off, expect to get alot of phone calls at all times of the day starting at 7 a.m. until 9 or 10 p.m. Get's very annoying. And they will try to obviously to get you to pay the debt off in full. All phone calls are recorded and they are required to tell you that this is an attempt to collect a debt. They will ask you for your address, telephone and all basic information. Then they will ask you to make a payment of some type. Don't ever give them your bank account number. A friend of mine made that mistake and they were supposed to take out a $35 dollar payment and took out over $1000. Which caused his bill checks to bounce and rent check. They are ruthless when it comes to collecting the debt. So be careful when dealing with it. But if at all possible. Save some money, and go to the debt collection company, contact them and offer them a cash offer of less than the wanted amount, sometimes as little as half, and they will except it, some money is better than none. Anyways. There you go.