Question: Can merely requesting/ordering one's free, annual credit reports from the 3 major CRAs set off an alert to the CAs that are on one's report? I'm mentoring a man who has accounts that have gone to CAs; at least one of these accounts is still open and has a balance. (I am debt-free. Yes, he gave me permission to discuss his situation here anonymously.) Point: I don't want to cause any accidental communication with a CA, any accidental automatic notice by the CA or any ground to be given accidentally to a CA. Moreover, he and I know enough to avoid unnecessary communication with a CA, unless expert-approved, so as not to harm bargaining power. I've been reading here for over a week. I'd like to have him order his CRs to discover the full extent of the CRA issues so I can ask you intelligent questions., if necessary. Thank you for your informative service. Let's continue the success story. We await your guidance.
While I may be dense, dumb, ignorant and maybe even stupid I fail to understand how your reply answers the question in any way.
Quote: Originally Posted by WhatsNext Question: Can merely requesting/ordering one's free, annual credit reports from the 3 major CRAs set off an alert to the CAs that are on one's report? no I'm mentoring a man who has accounts that have gone to CAs; at least one of these accounts is still open and has a balance. (I am debt-free. Yes, he gave me permission to discuss his situation here anonymously.) Point: I don't want to cause any accidental communication with a CA, any accidental automatic notice by the CA or any ground to be given accidentally to a CA. Moreover, he and I know enough to avoid unnecessary communication with a CA, unless expert-approved, so as not to harm bargaining power. I've been reading here for over a week. I'd like to have him order his CRs to discover the full extent of the CRA issues so I can ask you intelligent questions., if necessary. Thank you for your informative service. Let's continue the success story. We await your guidance. why doesnt he just pay the balances due? for some reason my IE wont multi quote, answer is in the quote
1. Thanks, collectman, for the embedded 'no' response in the quote. I will advise the man to order his CRs. 2. Answer: Mechanics: He has little money, and what's next is teaching him and having him self-sufficiently demonstrate the skills to balance his checking account regularly, to avoid bouncing any more checks. I recently walked him through what it cost him to be well-meaning and sign up for an automatic payment he couldn't cover last year: $25 bank NSF; $39 OCs returned check fee, $39 Late fee; removal of the payment amount from the 13% purchases balance to the 20% bank/ATM balance. Ethics/spirituality: We want a solution that is fair and ethical to all parties. I've lauded him for talking to me about his situation, confessing difficult truths, cooperating with me and completing small tasks independently and by deadline, after he's commited to taking them on. This is a huge win for him, along with bringing the still-with-OC account current, calling up the CC company and requesting and getting a waiver of the latest late fee. No matter where he came from, there he was. Men in his situation are starved for praise. Give a man the tools, give him room to use them, and afterward, give genuine praise for a genuinely impeccable job, and he will more likely take more positive action. Worked here. L8r.
To find the best solution to a problem, it is often appropriate to look beyond the question. If you are "mentoring", you may best serve your student by looking at the whole situation, possibly even beyond just issues of a particular debt to issues of financial budgetting and planning in general. What may be the best solution in one case may not be the best solution in others. My best knowledge on your question is that it is possible for CAs to pay the CRAs to notify them of activity on a consumer's credit file, including changes of address. Presumably the CA would already have to have this "trigger" in place before the event for which they requested notification, and presumably they would have to have "permissible purpose", but the collection purpose would already meet that. Changes of address or other activity might be due to other creditors reporting, but it might also occur as a result of a consumer request for a copy of their credit file. I do not know specifically from experience of a CA being notified from a consumer report request, but there is ample evidence on the web of such notifications due to opening new accounts, or inquiries as part of applying for a mortgage. If you are attempting to deal with the complete financial problem, you may need to pull reports anyway, to get an accurate picture, and just deal with this CA when the issue comes up. You might just pull one report, since the CA might only be watching one of them. If you knew from past reports that this CA's TL is only on one report, you might choose a CRA that did not have this TL on past reports, if you knew this information.
if a person applies for new credit or there is a change to the credit report most ca's that subscribe will be notified of that change within a couple days, if the report is unchanged and no new information is added it will not send out any "hit"
you should go in business and help the rest of america that is having problems, but refuse to deal with the situtation
Sounds like a plan for failure to me for the simple reason that those who refuse to deal with situations normally also refuse to pay someone to advise them to deal with situations which they refuse to deal with. Maybe he can turn himself into a Dr. Laura Schlessinger or a Dave Ramsey. They apparently make excellent money dishing out milksop answers and so called advice to those who participate in their talk shows. Lush Rimbaugh (misspelling intentional) was great at that too. He made a lot of money with his shows which served no other purpose than to make him rich and others a chance to cry on his shoulder. That's not to say all those talk show hosts don't give good advice but rather to point out that what they advise is nothing more than common sense of which there is far too little in this world.
Thank you; I really appreciate your input. I now have it as an action item to explain to him that an OC wants him to pay in order to preserve his payment stream rather than lose it to a CA. Yes, I'm looking at the whole picture, even beyond the mechanics of budgeting, the gamesmanship of negotiation, to the humility in listening to those wiser than we, and applying the strengths in the man's unique emotional and spiritual makeup. He's a people pleaser; hence his accession to posting an automatic payment at OC's request. The next lesson was around boundaries, and then directing that pleasing energy into seeking the advice first of a mentor clearly on his side, rather than trusting those polite people working for the CC company, who told him that $100 would keep him away from the CA (it did), but didn't tell him that another $69 would complete his minimum payment for the billing cycle. On the CRA activity: I won't be satisfied until I see the hard evidence of the CRs, but from questioning him, I know of no hard inquiries: he has neither applied for credit nor changed address or other personal data, since points in time that were prior to the latest two letters from one of the CAs.
In that case, it would appear that the CA already has his current address, whether from his CR or from the OC, and that the CRAs probably do too.
As you look at the total financial picture one area to check is tax withholding. Many times, people who are letting their life run on "automatic" do not even know what their tax liability really is, treating their refund as a windfall, when it is really an interest free loan to the government that may be severely crimping their cash flow. Correctly setting withholding can give you some traction from increased cash flow to apply against high interest debts, thereby producing that equivalent marginal return. It may require actively managing finances, however, by checking and readjusting withholding several times a year, since you don't want to be severely underwithheld when you are already under severe pressure from substantial levels of debt.
