Citimortgage help. Jam, anybody??

Ok...

First, did you dispute the tradelines directly with Citi or with the CRAs? (The difference being if you only disputed directly with the DF, the violation (if there is one) wouldn't be actionable, but if you disputed with the CRAs, the violations (if there are ones) would be actionable.)

(Hint: this is what makes the damages escalate and escalate quickly, if you dispute it every month, and they verify each tradeline in a less than 100% complete, accurate, and verifiable manner with each CRA, every month, the statutory damages could be $100-$1,000 x 3 PER month!) This is also why you want to draft letters that can encourage the CRA to re-dispute by escalating the legal threat with each letter, because the more times the CRA via the DF verifies the tradeline, it's adding up to $3,000.00 more to the kitty.

Now, in their defense, if there is a dispute made, they are required under the Fair Credit Reporting Act to report the account in dispute. I would however, argue that the implication that the dispute could impact your credit scores but they can't tell you how, as being an attempt to intimidate. (I am trying to stop just short of extort, since it's a PIF account, if they were asking for money, I would say it was an extortion attempt.)

So, if this was in response to CRA disputes, this is how I would respond.

Dear DSDA. (To help you figure out the acronym, the D's are Dip & Dumb... )

I want to sincerely thank you for your letter.

Contrary to your contention, you are not mandated by law to report anything to anyone. The only requirement is that if your company chooses to report information to a consumer reporting agency you are reporting 100% complete, accurate and verifiable information.

Therefore, I am putting you on notice that I will be filing a suit that your company has refused to correct or adjust my credit report with 100% complete, accurate and verifiable information as required under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Now, you can save us all a lot of time and effort in the United States District Court for the _____________ District of _________________, and either provide every piece of documentation from the day of account creation to the present day, that proves your company is reporting 100% complete, accurate and verifiable information. (You'll need to provide said information during discovery, anyhow, so I will give you the opportunity to prove that I am wrong with the inaccuracies on the tradeline listings, before I have to file in Federal Court.) Or you can take this one opportunity to delete the tradeline from all three CRAs.

 

But only if your spouse also demands verification of the inaccurate information as well.

So, you'll want to encourage your spouse to send the same letter to Citi and the same disputes to the 3 CRAs.

Then you'll want to send a second set of disputes to the three CRAs escalated. Cushman v. TransUnion, and then after a few disputes adding in Johnson v. MBNA for good measure.

I've posted the case laws that you'll want to cite in your disputes in other posts.

With you and your spouse sending the same disputes, you're then upping the ante twice as fast.

Well, the irony is that most of my knowledge came from an attorney who filed a suit that they didn't intend to follow through with... At a time when I had nothing more to do for 18 hours a day then to sift through this forum (and others), and read case law.

I would send a letter similar to the one in the first post, I would add in, that you specifically have proof from your bank that they cashed the payments before the alleged payments were late, and therefore you have documentation that they are willfully and knowingly reporting incomplete, inaccurate, and unverifiable information; they've been provided notice thereof directly, and through the CRAs, and they have willfully and knowingly chosen to continue reporting the same incomplete, inaccurate, and unverifiable information thereof, and in writing admitted that they have no intention to make the corrections of the incomplete, inaccurate, and unverifiable information in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

The keys to Cushman as relates to your case, is that they can only claim ignorance until it is brought to their attention, either directly (non-actionable) or via the CRAs (actionable). When it's through the CRAs, they'll claim that all they've received is a non-specific code, which may or may not have been germane to what was in your letter of dispute to the CRAs, so doing both notices is ideal, when there are actual inaccuracies which can be spelled out for the DF like they are a 2-year old.

(Imagine my surprise when a US States Attorney tried to say that the U.S. D.o.Ed wasn't reporting inaccurate, incomplete, or unverifiable information, when they filled CRA spaces with "DATA NOT AVAILABLE" well, hmmmm, "DATA NOT AVAILABLE" is an admission that the data is either inaccurate, incomplete, and/or unverifiable, otherwise the DATA would be AVAILABLE. )

 

First, you're claiming that the trade line is inaccurate. The OP already stated that he had some late pays. That's what they are reporting. What, specifically, is not accurate about the tradeline?

As for the "every single piece of documentation" ... no, they don't have to provide that. A contract and an account history of dates, payments, and balances is all they need.

 

jshimmer, actually, there is a difference between VALIDATION as relates to a CA, and being able to prove in court that they are reporting a tradeline with 100% COMPLETE, ACCURATE and VERIFIABLE information.

To prove that they are reporting 100% complete, accurate, and verifiable information, they need to be able to provide to the court a la Johnson v. MBNA that there are substantial physical records which could be conclusively used to verify the completeness, accuracy, and verifiability of that information.

The OP says that they are REPORTING 30 DAY LATES, but the OP has the bank records to show that the payments were in fact NOT LATE...