     Charlie | Saturday, December 11, 1999 - 06:18 am 
I have just about completed rehabilitating my credit after major problems in the early 1990s.
I had several accounts with American Express. My attorney advised me I had good cause to refuse to pay them. The six year statute of limitations in
Maine (where I incurred the disputed debts) ran as of October 1998. Since I became a Texas resident the four statute here ran even earlier. The seven year period for listing the debt has also run, and it is no longer listed on
the Experian report.
In March 1999 a law firm which has previously represented American Express pulled my Experian credit report, the inquiry is listed as "collection purpose". At that time the debt was still showing on the Experian report
In June I became aware of this and wrote to the firm, have received no response.
I have contacted Experian, who doesn't like to have inquiries disputed However the FCRA, as well as Experian practice seems to me to allow a
successful dispute to get the inquiry off the report.
First, I argue that if American Express pulled my credit file, Experian would have treated it as an "Account Management" inquiry and it wouldn't be
reported. In fact, Experian just removed another similar inquiry, where I had questioned a bank's reporting of an item, and the bank pulled my file to see what it said.
Second, Experian says that they will check with the law firm to "see if they have a valid collection account". I assume this is because (since I didn't request credit from them) the law firm's permissable purpose under FCRA would have been to collect a debt.
As a law firm (not a collection agency pretending to be one), don't they have a duty to recognize the statute of limitations? It is my impression
that they would be subject to sanctions if they signed a court complaint for a debt after the statute had run. So I would argue that if they knew, or should have known, that the debt was unenforceable, they had no valid collection purpose to access my credit report. |
