     Darin Tully (Dtully) | Friday, October 20, 2000 - 02:19 pm 
Hello everyone.
I have a couple of questions I hope you can answer for me. I read a paper on credit repair and I'm concerned about something it said. It stated that if you contest a item on your credit report and it's comes back verified, that could reset the Activity Date. Is this true?? Even on an account that's closed?
So, say you have an account that was paid off 2 years ago and closed and the date of Last Activity is 10/1998. And two years prior to that you had a 30-Day late - 10/1996. If you contest this and it comes back verified there's a chance the date of Last Activity might be 10/2000???
Also, if this could happen - what about Tax Liens that have been released? I know they stay on for 7 years in CA from the release date. But can this date be changed also?
And one more thing - thank you all. I have found a wealth of knowledge here. |
| Erik (Erik) | Friday, October 20, 2000 - 03:10 pm
If the account has been closed for 2 years and you haven't been sending them money then I don't think the date can be changed. I may be wrong though. |
| Chris Phelps (Twistsol) | Friday, October 20, 2000 - 08:16 pm
Only NEGATIVE items have a time limit on them. The 30 days late "should" roll off 10/2003 and the account will show as paid and in good standing for however long the credit bureau wants to leave it there.
Should is in quotes because we've all come to realize that should and will are rarely the same when dealing with the CRA's.
Chris |
| Darin Tully (Dtully) | Saturday, October 21, 2000 - 06:57 am
Chris, you state that 'Only NEGATIVE items have a time limit on them'. Does this mean that negative marks will be remove after 7 years from the date of the mark even if the accounts date of Last Activity is not at 7 years?
Reason I ask is in May of 1995 I got a late from Citibank for my student loan that was finally paid in full and closed Feb. of 2000. So, the account will show as paid and no lates in May of 2002?
Thanks a ton  |
| Christine Baker (Admin) | Saturday, October 21, 2000 - 09:23 am
Yes. It "should." |
| Lynn Whealer (Lynnwhealer) | Saturday, October 21, 2000 - 08:54 pm
Let me chime in with personal experiences. Two times in the last year, I have had Experian change the "date of last activity" on old closed/inactive accounts (one 4 years old, another 6 years). They weren't dergatory listings (just wanted to correct minor inaccuracies), so I didn't bother following with a dispute on their changing the "date of last activity", sonce there was no downside to the accounts being time-extended. This seemed fishy, so I posted a couple of inquirires on another board, and got several responses that they apparently are doing this to quite a few folks.
While I believe that the "date of last activity" can be adequately defended in your circumstance, I think the caveats about "should" need to be heeded. The CRA's do crap ALL the time that is in direct violation of the FCRA. Going through the process of getting things right can be an arduous, tedious, long, furstrating exercise. It's not right, and it's not fair, but the bastards do it anyway. Remember the old Lily Tomlin routine about the phone company: "We don't care....we don't have to....we're the phone company." The CRA's make the phone company look like Mother Theresa. |
| Christine Baker (Admin) | Monday, October 23, 2000 - 07:48 pm
Yup. Is there anything we can do about that? |
| Shylock (Shylock) | Tuesday, October 24, 2000 - 04:40 pm
Let's start our own credit reporting agency and do it right!! |
| Christine Baker (Admin) | Tuesday, October 24, 2000 - 05:05 pm
Not only am I MANY million dollars short, but I don't think any companies would use OUR CRA if we required accurate reporting.
Credit reporting is so inaccurate because the CRAs do a whole lot more than report. They collect, market and supply marketing data to corporate. This is an extremely profitable "relationship" for both the CRAs and corporate.
The CRAs do ANYTHING to keep their corporate clients happy. |
| Chris Phelps (Twistsol) | Tuesday, October 24, 2000 - 06:39 pm
Darin Asked "Reason I ask is in May of 1995 I got a late from Citibank for my student loan that was finally paid in full and closed Feb. of 2000. So, the account will show as paid and no lates in May of 2002?"
Yes it "should" but there's always a way around this for the CRAs. I saw a notation on a line item for an auto loan paid off in 1994 that had been marked 3x 30 days past due and was successfully disputed (it was never acutally late, thank you very much.) It was marked "Paid as agreed, current status since 05/01/99" This is effectively a hidden code that could be interpreted as the status was something other than paid as agreed prior to 05/01/99.
Are the CRAs really that evil? You make the call.
As far as the last activity goes, some creditors will re-report all their inactive accounts once a year. If they don't report anything in the last activity field the last reported date is used. You can dispute these successfully, but they'll come back next year unless you can get your creditor's IT manager to get some flunkie to update the field mapping when they report to the CRAs.
Chr's |
