I have a question for the group. I have a charge-off from 1998 on my Equifax report stemming from my Guarantor relationship on an apartment lease with my daughjter. She broke the lease, etc... that is not in dispute. What is of concern to me is the fact that the management company never actually tried to collect from me. The first I knew of the situation was when I received a notice from Equifax Risk Management Services (a Collection Agency, I believe) with all the pertinent info and a balance of $613.00 five months after the fact. I immediately disputed it. I never heard anything back from Equifax, though I later found that the management company placed a charge-off on mine and my daughters report approximately 15 days after I disputed it with Equifax. And the amount was different than Equifax was trying to collect ($540.00). My daughter recently settled with them for about half the amount. The only problem is she did not negotiate a removal of the tradeline as part of the deal (to be fair, it didn't occur to me to do this prior to reading this board). It now reflects, on my report, a $0 balance with the notation " account closed by consumer". Still shows as a charge-off. I am currently in letter exchanges with this management company asking them to remove it from my file as I was never billed. I believe I must have an opportunity to pay the bill before a charge-off is filed. I haven't yet started with Equifax directly. I sent a letter to the management company and got the obligatory Stern Letter from their attorney. I listed a series of actions that would escalate ranging from BBB complaints to a Small Claims lawsuit. to compel them to remove it. If I have a judgement and they still don't, I am pretty sure Equifax would have to. My question is, as a cosigner, were they legally obligated to attempt to collect from me before encumbering my credit?? My sense of it is that I should have all the rights as the original debtor. Any thoughts??
Fritz,you pose a very interesting question that unfortunitly I can't answer.I'm sure others on this board will respond.GOOD LUCK.
Thanks. It seems that they kept going after my daughter, then when, they had no success, tirned it over to a CA. When the CA sent their first letters (my first notification of debt) and I disputed, it seems the original creditor decided, 15 days later, to just do a charge-off filed against both our Equifax files. It seems strange (and potentially actionable with Equifax Risk Management, the CA) that they could just stop the process (i.e. not respond to my dispute) 15 days after it was initiated. Thanks again...
I had something similar happen with a subsidary of Wells Fargo where I was the cosigner on a student loan. My son was trying to get an extension on the payments. They took 4 months to process his request and then denied it. During that four month period, I was in contact with them by phone at least once a week. They never mentioned any payments being owed. They had told my son no payments were due while the extension request was pending. The day after they denied the request, they turned it over to a collection agency who never contacted me. The first I heard about it was when I called the bank to ask them to reconsider the extension. The bank took the position that the loan was my son's, not mine, and therefore they did not have to notify me of any problems. In order to avoid a problem, I ended up paying off the loan in full plus $2,000 in legal fees. They never sent me anything in writing to document the attorney fees as promised. Some of you have seen my posts here about Wells Fargo and Plato loans. Don't deal with them. The bottom line is that I cannot help you. I can only say that a major bank has taken the position with me that they have no obligation to notify a cosigner of a default. Incidently, this all happened before I learned about this board. I was told that the attorney was there with the lawsuit in his hand ready to go to the courthouse unless I paid immediately. I now realize what bs that was.
