     Yvette | Thursday, November 25, 1999 - 05:15 pm 
I had excellent credit until an illness that left me with limited income for about 9 months. During that period my car was repossessed and 3 credit cards were closed and put in collections. I also have a phone & gas bill that are in collections (I moved back home and didn't pay the closing bill) Anyway how do I go about restoring my credit? How do I make sure that the original creditor & the collection account are taken off my report? How do I approach the creditors with my request for deletion? Any advice you can give will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks |
| Anonymous | Sunday, November 28, 1999 - 12:49 pm
Since I was a single mom with no support from the father of my children, my credit had some dings in it. I have been working on clearing up things and have found the following out: (1) obtain your credit report from all three reporting agencies; (2) call each of the creditors listed on your reports to verify the amount you owe them and to get the exact account number (credit bureaus sometimes change the numbers for some reason); (3) try to negotiate removal of the item from your reports if you pay them in full (it sometimes works); (4) mail them a personal check unless they ask for a cashier's check (it's easier to get a copy of the canceled check if you have to send a copy to the credit bureaus) via certified mail, return receipt requested; and (5) after everything is paid, start writing dispute letters to the credit bureaus sending them certified mail, return receipt requested (the credit bureaus have 30 days from the date of receipt to respond so it is important to document everyting) being sure to send copies of everything you intend to use as proof. It is important to follow up on a regular basis with the credit bureaus if they make mistakes (and they will). I am in the process of trying to get a "collection" removed from one of my reports right now that belongs to someone else (namely my adult daughter who was over 21 at the time). First I called the creditor who was particularly nasty with me and refused to remove the item. (This company had never sent my daughter a single bill, preferring instead to go after me.) I then filed a dispute with all three reporting agencies and filed a complaint with the attorney general's office of the state the creditor was located in. If none of this works, I intend to sue this company in small claims court. |
| Gary | Sunday, December 19, 1999 - 02:09 am
Please understand something here, Credit Reporting Agencies have the right to report derogatory information for 7 years, it's their business, and they don't delete derogatory information at the request of a credit grantor. If the information is accurate, the FCRA says they can report it, that's what they do. |
| rcb | Sunday, December 19, 1999 - 06:24 am
Gary -
You're missing something, though. The FCRA does not say that EVERY credit grantor MUST report derogatory information. In fact, a credit grantor doesn't have to report AT ALL. IF THEY DO, then it must be accurate. Which, essentially means that a credit grantor or whoever owns the debt CAN, if they choose, contact the agency to have it removed because they don't wish to report it any more. What usually happens is, you make a deal with the owner of the debt, and if they agree to rmeove it, all they have to do is contact the CB and tell them to remove it. It's that simple. By having it removed, they're choosing to NOT report ANY information, which they have the right to do. It doesn't matter what excuse they give the CB (the info was accurate, this person really never owed this debt, we were wrong, etc.).
Credit grantors pay one or more of the CB's for the use of their information - some use one, some two, some all three. Others, none at all. They own the debt, they can report it as they wish, or not at all. |
| Gary | Sunday, December 19, 1999 - 09:47 pm
RCB, so many people just don't understand this, so let's play. RCB is a credit grantor, lets call RCB the "Bank", and I'm going to be the Credit Reporting Agency, "CRA". Yvette has 3 credit cards placed on her credit report as collection accounts, all from the "bank". Yvette pays all 3 accounts off, and asks the "bank" to take them off her credit report, because now her credit report says she had 3 collection accounts, and they are paid in full. I issue credit reports, I'm the "CRA". Can the "bank" remove something from my business? Can I remove money from the "bank"? If you call me(or write)and ask me to remove this information from my files, I'm going to ask you to write this number down; 15 U.S.C. 1681c(a)(4), then I'm going to tell you to look it up, and then I'll hang up on you. The "bank" is not the "CRA", they are two very different businesses, and one cannot tell the other one how to conduct his own business. The "bank", once it has reported the collection accounts, now has no control, the FCRA determines the length of the seven years. Credit Grantors do not have any control over deleting derogatory information from a credit report, especially as you put it, the information is accurate! Believe me, once a CRA has accurate information about a collection account, it will be there for 7 years, period. |
| Greg Fisher, creditscoring.com | Sunday, December 19, 1999 - 10:21 pm
Gary:
How does the bank communicate the collection information to the CRA? Electronically? Verbally? With paper? |
| Sean | Monday, December 20, 1999 - 06:38 am
Gary:
You're so wrong you don't even know it.
Inaccurate information or information that cannot be verified must be removed from your credit report.
It is a common practice in all settlements to have a confidentiality agreement included. You'll see these settlements reported in the paper where neither party indicates exactly what was agreed to, how much money changed hands or anything.
If your debt settlement agreement includes a confidentiality clause then the collection agency will find itself unable to verify the accuracy of the information they have reported without violating the settlement agreement. The credit report entries quickly vanish after an investigator from the CRA calls up and finds out the company can't or won't verify the accuracy of the information originally reported. |
| rcb | Monday, December 20, 1999 - 06:38 am
Gary -
You are absolutely incorrect (and Christine is giving ME hell for posting inaccurate information). Please don't give these people the wrong info.
The "bank" owns the debt. They own the right to report, not report AND they pay you to maintain the information that THEY choose to have you maintain. If your claim was true, then even INACCURATE information would not be able to be removed because YOU (the CRA) "owns" it. The CRA's don't necessarily "own" the data - they are paid by creditors to collect the data, and they are paid to distribute it to potential credit grantors that subscribe to their service(s). And I use the word "own" in that sense - sure they sell some of the data, but technically, they don't "own" it. They "own" what's reported, at the time it's reported, and for as long as it's reported, but they don't "own" it in a sense that THEY (the credit bureau) decides what is reported and what's not, and what status is on the trade line.
Your scenario with a twist: Yvette has three credit cards. She defaults on all of them, but somehow (data entry error) one of them gets reported into Marcia's bureau file. When the CRA contacts the bank for Marcia's dispute, how do they know the file ISN'T really Marcia's, and that Marcia "worked a deal" with the bank that would result in the file being removed from her credit report? They (you) don't. They simply do exactly what the bank tells them to do. The bank says "it was our error - it never should have been reported to Marcia's file - remove it". You, the CRA, don't know if that's the truth - it could very well have been Marcia's to begin with.
What if they DID make a mistake, and the cards weren't really Yvette's to begin with? How would you (the CRA) know?
The law does NOT state that they HAVE to report your information, whether it's good, bad or indifferent. The law states that IF they report, they MUST report accurate. If they choose to NOT report derogatory info, even after they have reported it for months or years, they still have the right to NOT report it LATER. THIS is how "deals" are worked with creditors IF they choose to do so.
Don't go telling people that "Believe me, once a CRA has accurate information about a collection account, it will be there for 7 years, period". That is completely untrue. There ARE creditors that will refuse to remove or modify data, but that is based on their own internal policy. During the past two years, I have made "deals" with close to a dozen creditors that had been reporting degrogatory ACCURATE information for YEARS, and based on our deals, all but 2 were completely removed. Period.
If you don't believe me, call TRW, Experian and Equifax yourself. Two of them even told me this information: if you and a creditor agree to a deal that includes a settlement or payoff in exchange for a trade line or collection item being REMOVED from your report, get it in writing BEFORE you pay them. Because if you pay them, and they DON'T follow through with their end of the deal, all you have to do is fax the agreement letter (on creditor letterhead with an authorized signature, account # and agreement & your personal identifcation information) along with your proof of payment (cancelled check, etc.), the credit bureau will remove the item as per the agreement.
Yes, negative accurate information CAN be removed. SHOULD they be allowed? Depends on who you ask. Are they within their legal means? Again, depends on who you ask. Some will say "it's negative and accurate, it should stay no matter what". Others would say "they own it, if they choose to agree to remove it in exchange for payment of an otherwise forever unpaid debt, and the law says that they don't HAVE to report it, then it's okay." |
| Kristy Welsh | Monday, December 20, 1999 - 09:12 am
Just one more note:
The credit bureaus are for-profit companies, they are not government entities. It's true that the only law they have to follow is if they report information about someone, it has to be accurate.
What's accurate? Well, "paying as agreed" certainly, but the "agreement" for payment is a contract between the creditor and the consumer. Any contract can be amended, if both parties agree. If the creditor decides to amend the terms of the contract, for example: agreeing to report the consumer as paying on time to the bureaus if the consumer pays X amount towards the debt, well then hasn't the consumer "paid as agreed" at this point if they follow the new terms.
The bureaus can't completely police the creditors for the accuracy of the information they have (whether or not they should is another subject), they merely report it. Legally, they must do some verification of information disputed by consumers is the only obligation that I know of, but this is part of reporting accurate information. |
| lynn whealer | Tuesday, December 21, 1999 - 02:59 pm
Folks, I just want to tell you that you are all, in my opinion, a VERY valuable asset to people who are trying to reclaim their present and future from issues that occurred in the past. Sometimes, there are arguments, squabbles, and some personal animosiites in the forum, but in the end, it usually works out that THE correct answer comes out....and in the process of bantering things around, important ancillary issues get explored as well. I personally have benefitted GREATLY from all the discussions over the 18 months I've read Bayhouse (THANK YOU, once again, Christine!), and I know that many others have and are continuing to do so. Thanks to ALL of you for taking time to try to help myself and others- it's impossible for anyone to be correct about this sh*t 100% of the time, but then "they" have the deck stacked against "us" ! |
| Anonymous | Tuesday, January 11, 2000 - 05:16 am
Let me share a little experience that I have had with a particular wording in the FCRA. The law states that an "item" must be deleted if it is inaccurate. What constitutes an item? I have found that any portion of an entry, can be an item
and can be disputed without you telling them what it is about the "item" that is incorrect. Threats of lawsuits are very effective. The key is finding anything that is not 100% accurated. |
