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     | Thursday, March 02, 2000 - 12:47 pm  Does this mean if I am 30 days late on a payment 7 years ago, but keep using the card, It stays on my credit report? Say I cancel the card next year, Do I have to wait 7 years from then??? -Dan
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| | Thursday, March 02, 2000 - 05:34 pm If you're asking if you need to cancel a credit card as soon as you miss a payment in order to get that DEL30 notation off, the answer is no. Your payment history will show CURRENT WAS 30 for 7 years from the date of delinquency and will then switch to read simply CURRENT assuming, of course, that you are not delinquent at all for the next 84 months.
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| | Friday, March 03, 2000 - 02:50 am you may also dispute the DEL30 notation.the fair credit reporting act says the creditor must respond within 30 days and prove that the notation is correct or it is to be removed
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| | Friday, March 03, 2000 - 06:02 am But the CRA can add the negative listing back if the creditor does finally get back to them after the 30 day deadline. However, they need to notify you in writing that they are doing this.
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| | Friday, March 03, 2000 - 06:35 am And it is not ethical to dispute accurate information. It may also be illegal.
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| | Friday, March 03, 2000 - 08:13 am Question for Sean - If it is illegal to dispute accurate information, then how can it not be just as "illegal" to negotiage a payment settlement that includes, as part of the terms, REMOVAL of the "accurate" negative information entry from the credit report? Both accomplish (or try to accomplish) the same thing - getting the "accurate" negative info off the report.
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| | Friday, March 03, 2000 - 08:48 am Hey Sean, I found an article about disputing accurate information on your credit report. One of the best explanations of that is the following article written by Jayson Orvis, Attorney At Law: Yes!IT IS ETHICAL TO TRY AND REMOVE LEGITIMATE BAD CREDIT? "Credit Repair" has not been kind to the American consumer. In fact, the phrase is synonymous with fraud. This is the stigma we face as we offer a membership wherein the client is offered an alternative to "credit prison." Because the nasty reputation of credit repair sometimes washes over into our space, we are often called upon to defend the ethics of our service. Despite the disrepute which taints credit improvement, our service is clearly analogous to the service provided by a defense attorney. The credit report is no more than an allegation. Unfortunately, most citizens never challenge that allegation. By enlisting the Law Offices through N.A.C.A. to their defense, our clients employ us to enter a plea of "not guilty." We take an affirmative defense; we offer a reasonable alibi and leave it to the bureaus to substantiate their allegation. If the bureau claims to have investigated and affirmed the allegation, we appeal the decision. Eventually, we find that most credit report allegations are at some point untenable and are removed. Removing record of a negative credit account, which did actually exist, is undoubtedly ethically sound. We belong to a fundamentally capitalistic civilization and the credit bureaus capitalize on consumer information. Unlike our legal system, the bureaus take no oath to truth, equity and the common good. No American has the moral obligation to support any business venture or corporation, much less a corporation which may well destroy their financial life. The information tended by the credit bureaus is ethically "up for grabs."
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| | Saturday, March 04, 2000 - 04:05 am Well of course he's going to defend the ethics of what he does. The mere quote is absurd. Even hardened criminals can provide numerous rationalizations and excuses for their behavior. Jayson Orvis never has to look the people he harms in the face. Oh, he claims that he's just up against a business venture and defending you against "credit prison." But the reality is that there are people out there that will score 679 and get turned down for a credit card that they both need and deserve simply because someone who should've had accurate, negative information on their profile successfully got it removed. This attorney starts his 'defense' of you by lying. He writes the credit bureaus saying, "This information is not accurate" or perhaps he fudges that statement by saying, "To the best of my knowledge this information is not accurate" to set up a possible claim later that he was merely uninformed as opposed to lying. Lying is wrong.
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| | Monday, March 06, 2000 - 05:44 am Again Sean - what is the difference between disputing accurate negative information and "negotiating" the removal of that information as part of a monetary settlement? Isn't the latter "lying"?
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| | Monday, March 06, 2000 - 06:36 am Actually, you are amending the terms of your original contract by negotiating with your creditor, so if new contract says you paid as agreed, I don't think it's lying.
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| | Monday, March 06, 2000 - 09:20 am My point was that Sean seemed to suggest that getting accurate negative information removed by a challenge was "wrong" because it was "wrong" to engage in an activity that ultimately gets accurate negative information removed. If getting accurate information removed is "wrong", then it is "wrong" no matter how you go about getting it removed (challenge, settlemment, bribery of a CRA worker, or hacking into the system and removing it yourself). Sean can't have it both ways by maintaining that it is "wrong" to challenge accurate negative information away, but it is "not wrong" to negotiate it away via settlement. As far as it being "illegal", I am not aware of any law that prohibits a consumer from disputing information on a credit report (even if the information is true), nor am I aware of a law that prohibits a settlement that includes removal of the (correct) negative information.
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| | Monday, March 06, 2000 - 12:51 pm It's not illegal to challenge any information on your credit report. (If it is, I couldn't find the reference.) I think the strict interpretation of the FCRA says that information need to be reported accurately, if it is reported at all. Negotiating with a creditor to change a listing is not illegal, even under the interpretation of the FCRA. You are just changing the terms of the original contract. Obviously, it's not illegal to change the terms of an contract, should both parties be in agreement. Let's say you change the terms of the orginal contract by adding a clause that says "if Person X pays $1000 we consider the account 'paid as agreed' and will waive other fees". If the person honors the clause, the creditor better report that person's account to the bureaus as "paid as agreed". It's now their legal obligation to do so, enforceable in court, as the person has paid per agreement to the amended contract.
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| | Monday, March 06, 2000 - 05:43 pm In addressing the "wrongness" of disputing accurate information, is it really appropriate to compare this disputing process to the negotiating process? Yes, in both situations one has the common goal of removing derogatory info from one's credit report. There is nothing wrong with improving one's situation, but maybe there is something wrong if in doing so you hurt some innocent 3rd party. The issue is not whether the harm is intentional, but rather whether the harm will likely occur. In negotiating, we take up the resources of the creditor. They come to an agreement, or they don't. But no 3rd party is directly affected by the terms of your negotiation. On the other hand, there is the dispute process. In knowingly disputing accurate info, we strain the resources of the credit reporting bureaus. I do not recall where I read that the big 3 (or maybe it was just one of the big 3) get hit with 10,000 disputes per day. When we dispute ACCURATEe info, we are not acting without regard for that strain. We act with the intent to increase that strain. The hope is that the bureaus will be too busy to get the info verified in time. One might say "who cares if we strain the bureaus. Let them work for their $8.30." The problem is that the bureaus may not be the ones who suffer. Rather, I suspect that the people who suffer are people who are trying to get inaccurate info removed, and who cannot understand why the process is taking to long. Or who cannot understand why the bureaus are so quick to label their honest dispute as a frivolous one. Ironically, many of the people who visit this board looking for assistance in removing INACCURATE info today, may be here because the bureaus are too busy with disputes of ACCURATE info submitted by people who visited the board yesterday. A double standard perhaps, but I admit to telling people to dispute the info if they have any doubts - but I would not do it personally. An analogy. I think that it wonderful that people have dogs and enhance their lives thereby. But it is a shame if they have to take their dog to crap in my yard where I do the weeding by hand. My view is that we should do anything to make ourselves happy, unless it hurts someone else.
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| | Tuesday, March 07, 2000 - 03:52 am Back in 97 I had a pager with a company. One day my pager stopped working so I called the pager company. All day I would call and I only got the recording that I should call back during their "normal business hours." In the job I was in I >>>HAD<<< to have that pager, so I went to another place and had my pager activated with them. All of this happened before I knew anything about credit. Late 97 I pulled my credit profile for the first time in my life and saw a collection on it. I called those people up and lo and behold they were retained by the pager company to collect some debt they figured I owed them. It amounted to like $42.50 or something. They volunteered the information that they'd delete that negative entry if I paid them. So I sent them a check for $42.50 and they cleared the item. Do I feel that I did something wrong by that? Absolutely not. Now when you try to settle for less than the amount owed and get deletion you enter a gray area. Such an action is immoral and might be unethical but it's definitely not illegal. On the other hand disputing accurate information involves either lying or Clintonesque statements. You can't simply call up a credit bureau and say, "This information on my account is accurate, but I want you to investigate it anyway just in case the creditor lost my file, you're too busy to get around to it or they're too busy to get around to it." Disputes of accurate information always either expressly state that the information is inaccurate or imply that it is. That's lying. If you did it in a court of law, it would be perjury. The credit bureaus have a certain number of people that handle these disputes. Every dispute of accurate information that comes in prevents these people from properly handling a legitimate dispute of inaccurate information. There are numerous cases on this board where a person has applied for a mortgage and found out that she has problems with her credit profile and she'd like to get the problem resolved in a very short time. Every dispute of accurate information that a credit repository has to handle prevents them from handling this person's urgent dispute rapidly. There are unintended consequences to everything we do. We should be aware of as many of the consequences of our actions as possible.
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| | Tuesday, March 07, 2000 - 05:39 am By saying that disputing information wasn't illegal, I wasn't advocating it. Just stating the facts. Yes, I agree, that the bureaus are overworked by people who know the system and are trying to run around it. It does make it more difficult for others to get their information corrected if there is a quagmire of disputes taking up the available bandwidth employees have to process them. I'm sure it does put someone's legitmiate claim at a disadvantage could cause potential harm to them. This is not something I want to see. Just a thought, though: to survive most efficiently in the current economic environment, we all need credit, and that throws our information into the credit bureaus, whether we want be involved with the CRA's or not. Being not-completely-willing participants in this system, that we've had nothing to do with setting up, nor have much control over it, I think it's good for everyone to know the rules. I also don't think morality has anything to do with the CRA's: they are not the will of god, just big business.
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| | Tuesday, March 07, 2000 - 05:42 am I don't see how it can be any less "ok" to pay less than the full amount to get an accurate negative entry removed, to simply dispute it away, or to pay the full amount and get the entry removed. The bottom line is, no matter HOW you do it, you are getting ACCURATE negative information removed. Either getting ACCURATE negative information removed is "wrong", or it is not. It cannot be "wrong" UNLESS YOU PAY THE FULL AMOUNT FIRST. As far as a moral issue, consider this scenerio. I owe ACME $ 100.00 and tell them I can't pay. They put a charge off on my credit report. A year later I offer ACME $ 50.00 in exchange for deleting the entry (how I word the agreement is not important, bottom line is I am paying a sum to ACME to get the ACCURATE negative information removed). Morally, would it not be just as "imoral" for ACME to accept the offer? Even if I offer 10 times the original amount, isn't it ACME's moral duty to keep the true negative remark on the credit report? I know the CRA's position is that such deals attack the integrity of the Credit Reporting System. On the other hand, if they accept the offer, cannot you argue that the system worked? ACME was able to collect a debt because they had the leverage of affecting my credit? Is not that a better use of the "system" for creditors than simply "reporting the facts"? (Just as civil suits are often settled out-of-court with secrecy agreements)? In business (and this is business, nothing more, nothing less), WHATEVER YOU CAN NEGOTIATE IS FAIR. If you can sell your car in a month for $ 1,000, but you HAVE to have cash today to pay a court fine to avoid being put in jail, and I offer you $ 200 today and you take it, THAT IS FAIR. If you offer ACME $ 50.00 to remove the remark, and they accept it because they know that if they don't take it they will probably get nothing, THAT IS FAIR. If this was your mother or father you owed, that would be a different story, but this is a BUSINESS. YOU GET WHAT YOU CAN NEGOTIATE.
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| | Tuesday, March 07, 2000 - 12:32 pm The credit reporting system we have is voluntary. No one has to report anything. Credit reporting agencies won't accept reports from just anyone. You need to be a subscriber or pay a fee to report. The point of the credit reporting system is to determine a person's likelihood of taking a loss. A collection or charge off notation is an indication that a loss has been taken on a particular consumer. Suppose, for example, that you owe $100.00 on a credit card and your minumum payment amount is $10.00. You end up not paying and it goes all the way to collections. Chances are excellent that you got charged late fees every month. The average late fee is $29.00 (see http://www.cardweb.com) that means 6 months worth of late fees are, on average, $174. This will be added to the $100.00 principal plus (let's say) $9.00 interest. So when you go to collections you are reported as owing $283. If you pay that $283 out of collections the collection agency will take 40 percent ($113.20) and the original creditor will get the balance ($169.80). I would consider it very misleading for a credit grantor to be owed $100.00 in principal, receive $169.80 and keep a chargeoff notation on a consumer's file, which indicates that a loss had been taken on that consumer. I'm aware that sharp negotiation can convince a credit grantor to take pennies on the dollar to settle debts. I don't consider it appropriate to owe $100 and pay $50. I've never in my life settled a debt for less than the amount owed. I'm aware that other people do. Without knowing all the facts I'm not here to condemn them. But I do state that it's something I would not consider.
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| | Tuesday, March 07, 2000 - 12:54 pm But having your information in the credit bureaus is not completely voluntary. If you have credit with a creditor who reports to the the CRA's, your information goes into their database whether you want the info in there or not. It's voluntary to get and use credit, but in today's ecomonic environment, not practical or convenient to avoid credit.
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| | Tuesday, March 07, 2000 - 06:16 pm I mean it's voluntary on the part of the credit grantors. They don't have to report in order to have access to credit information. It's voluntary and it costs too.
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