     Lynn Whealer | Wednesday, February 02, 2000 - 11:59 am 
This post is actually a continuation of the thread entitled
"They just never stop. A New one from Citibank",
but that was CB specific, and now I have a question that is more generic and probably applies to a lot of people.
Checking more closely, I see that between my wife and me, there are a total of 8 tradelines that are reporting "N/A" for credit limits. These are ALL good OLD tradelines in good standing. As Don noted, in "USe of Credit" sections (Experian), the actual credit limits are there, and of course they are on our statements. The funny thing is that as I look through many reports we've pulled from the past year, there are many variations where limits are sometimes reported, sometimes as $0, and then as "N/A"....it sort of comes and goes. Also, there are instances where Transunion shows a credit limit for an account, and EQU and EXP do not (reports pulled within one day of each other). So it seems that on any given day, a FICO could be run on me and depending on what was in "credit limit" field ("N/A", correct amount, or 0$), I could have a score all over the map due to credit used-to-credit available ratios.
Now, the question: My initial thought was to dispute all these with the CRA's, with ALL kinds of documentation....but what IF...the disputes wound up causing deletions of OLD GOOD tradelines because the creditor did not respond to a dispute. Then I have just hosed myself big-time by killing some tradelines that are very positive components of FICO. This happened once berfore when I tried to get a car loan tradeline showing "paid off" instead of just languishing as "open"---the lender didn't respond and the CRA's deleted a great satisfied tradeline, and I've not beeen able to get it re-instated.anyway....is my logic cap on right? |
| rcb (Rbielak) | Thursday, February 03, 2000 - 06:33 am
I had a revolving account for 2.5 years and closed it. For months, it still showed as having a $2200 balance, but it showed -CLOSED-. I disputed it and one bureau didn't/couldn't verify and simply deleted 30 months worth of great history, all when I was trying to rebuild my credit. I contacted the bureau and argued for a day and they put it back (don't let them lie - they tried doing that to me the first time I called - they actually KEEP the history for a while after removing, it just isn't reported to anyone that requests your file).
The same trade line had the same thing happen at another bureau. They put it back as well.
Funny thing: I contacted the creditor both times, and she stated that they had NEVER been contacted by the bureaus and she was the ONLY person that handles disputes for the company. So the bureaus got lazy and thought I'd be happy with a deletion. They LIED about TRYING to verify it, and I told the supervisors' at each of the bureaus that "they did NOT verify and just lied about trying" and that is what prompted an IMMEDIATE return of the data to my file. Equifax actually put us on a three way call with the creditor.
If it's an old, old account, I wouldn't bother with it. If it's a newer account, then I'd want it to be updated with the proper information. Contact the creditor BEFORE you contact the credit bureaus and get a name and number of someone that can/will verify the account info. Then call the CRA's to dispute the account(s) and give the name/number for them to contact. Many times they contact the right company but wrong department or person and they can't verify it.
I don't believe (warning: opinion) that older accounts, regardless of whether they are negative or positive, have as much effect as recent accounts on your FICO scores. |
