When disputing a tradeline as never late why is it the CRAs delete when there's no response from the OC whether than updating it to paid as agreed? Is this a violation of the credit laws?
The FCRA says the disputed information may either be updated or deleted. Remember there is nothing in the FCRA that requires a tradeline to be reported, just that the information associated with the TL be correct. Its pretty much up to the discretion of the particular CRA your dealing with. TU is notorious for deleting whole TL's.
I thought your post was so excellent that I added it to both pros@autobotinfo.com and cons@autobotinfo.com There are those tidbits of information that desperately beg to be preserved for the benefit of all.
This is what the FCRA says about dispute results: 5) Treatment of inaccurate or unverifiable information. (A) In general. If, after any reinvestigation under paragraph (1) of any information disputed by a consumer, an item of the information is found to be inaccurate or incomplete or cannot be verified, the consumer reporting agency shall promptly delete that item of information from the consumer's file or modify that item of information, as appropriate, based on the results of the reinvestigation. IMO that means if I dispute say a 30 day late payment as never late, and the oc doesn't respond, the cra is then required to delete the late pay notation only, not the entire tradeline. Although the cra's for the most part will just delete the entire tradeline in this situation, I think if pushed legally, they would be found in violation. BTW, I have 2 times disputed just a late pay notation and both times only the disputed notation was deleted, leaving the tradeline as pays as agreed.
maybe the way you word your dispute effects this. The last time I went through this process I spelled out exacly what it was I wanted them to do. Something to the effect of :"I was never late, please remove the late anotation" and not just "I was never late, please verify". I dont' know if it had much effect, but I never had a TL drop that I wanted to keep. I was probably just lucky.
I tend to think that being very specific in one's requests just might be one of the determining factors in the outcome of disputes.
TU deleted BOTH my Cap1 accounts (both in good standing) after I disputed the credit limit. I was soo mad. When I called, the gal laughed and said " they didn't respond so we had to delete". Well, why can't they delete the damn charge-off when I provided proof of innacurate info??? Hardly any of my accounts report to TU and this hurt. I'm not sure if it was better to have the good accounts than having them looked maxed out or not. Anyhow, can these accounts be reinserted? When I called Cap1, I went through too many idiots that claimed my credit limit does not effect my score. Got to a manager, thought it was handled, then got some bogus letter that my high limit was blah blah blah. Now, I'm not sure if I want the accounts back in if they wont report limits. I was actually just trying to respond to your post. Sorry for ranting on.r
Here's the deal with disputes. When an account is disputed by a consumer the CRA sends the furnisher of information the personal identifying information (name, address, and social security number) and a description of the nature of the dispute. This is pretty much mandatory so the furnisher of information knows what records to check and so on. When a furnisher of information fails to respond to a CRA's request, the personal identifying information associated with the TL does not get verified, thus in fact the CRA would be breaking the law by continuing to report a TL to whom the ownership cannot be verified. Now then if a furnisher of information does respond, and provides the CRA with no lates and the whole tradeline gets deleted you may have a cause of action. The only caveat with that is you would have to sue the CRA and go thru the discovery process to determine exactly how the furnisher of information responded because the procedure request statues are so vaguely written. The above pricipals apply to good accounts as well. I'm sure the folks at Crapital One are trained not to respond to CL disputes and as such the accounts are 86'd by the CRA because of the reasons above. Then I'd say you had a cause of action against Crapital One under 15 U.S.C. § 1681s-2(b) of the FCRA for not completing the disputes on their end. It may also explain why some have greater luck disputing balances and other minor things wrong with TL. The furnisher of information thinks its frivilous and does not respond for whatever reason and then the whole TL gets deleted because the personal identifying information does not get verified.
Re: Re: Credit law for update vs deletion Did you read the particular statute? (A) In general. If, after any reinvestigation under paragraph (1) of any information disputed by a consumer, an item of the information is found to be inaccurate or incomplete or cannot be verified, the consumer reporting agency shall promptly delete that item of information from the consumer's file or modify that item of information, as appropriate, based on the results of the reinvestigation It says whichever action is appropriate. That would be based upon what is disputed. Meaning, a tradeline itself, or an item of information within the tradeline. If an item of info within the tradeline cannot be verified for whatever reason, that item of info must be deleted, not the complete tradeline.
Re: Re: Credit law for update vs deletion Interesting.... So should a procedural request along with Cap1 refussal to verify prove anything? If the original poster can prove there were no lates and the creditor has been regularly reporting, can this be proof of incorrectly reporting or refusal to report positive info????
Re: Re: Credit law for update vs deletion Regardless of what the law says they seem to do whatever they choose to do and that seems to be very carefully orchastrated to be in their best interests and not that of anyone else. So the next step in deciding why they did something and quite probably what they may do in any future situation presented to them by the consumer is to figure out what their best interests might be. In order figure out what that might be we need to look for the money trail as always. To do that we need to know who pays them, the consumer or the merchants. That's easy. So its also easy to figure out that the best interests of the merchant is to earn the most money possible by charging the greatest amount of money possible as well as to be as certain as possible not to loan money to those who might be a potential risk to their investments. In order to serve and protect the best interests of the customer the credit bureaus obviously must take those courses of action that would result in the greatest reduction of score possible. One of those actions would be to keep track of all actions by the consumer and if it appears by reason of multiple actions such as letters, faxes or phone calls that the consumer might be trying to artificially increase his scores they would act in whatever manner would be the most damaging to the consumer in order to confuse them and discourage them from attempting to do anything that would increase their scores. And if the consumer don't like that there is but one option and that is to file a law suit against the CRA which very well might be met with a total blackout of any information request by any creditor so that the consumer is again thwarted. They probably figure that doing things that way is most likely to cause the consumer to just give up due to the high cost of hiring attorneys to file law suits for them. I'd sure like to be wrong on all of that, but that seems to me to be just about the way it works.
Re: Re: Credit law for update vs deletion Give me a break. All this amounts to is the fact that these untrained employees of the cra's don't have a clue as to what they are or are not suppposed to do. When ever I have had similar problems, I go straight to the people whose names have been posted on this board a zillion times, and it get fixed. Bill, you've been listening to Jason too much. LOL This issue has also been discussed here numerous times. If searches were to be done, people would see who to call to get this fixed. And, if that doesn't work, a lawsuit will. Lawsuits against the cra's is the quickest, surest way to get a clean report. They don't want to spend thousands of dollars defending small claims lawsuits, especially when they know they have committed untold numbers of violations. If they can fix it with a single push of the delete key, they will. I have done it as have many, many others. I think my case against experian(credit data) well documented in the "this board is being watched" thread, was the 2nd lawsuit discussed here by a CN member against a cra. The first was Lizardking. Bill, I'm curious, you say over and over you don't deal with cra's. So, how is it you know so much about how they operate at this point in time?
Re: Re: Credit law for update vs deletion That's really simple. I read creditnet and just about every other message board and newsgroup and email forum out there. Not every message on every one of them, of course because that isn't necessary. And then keeping track of the most important stuff. That way I can keep up with the most important developments. Doing that one gets a pretty good feel for what makes the most sense, what apparently works and what don't. And using a bit of common sense to figure out the most likely reason why things work and why they don't. It really don't take much genius to get things figured out and one don't have to try them to find out whether they work or why. Keeping careful track of things is the most important key to being able to figure them out. How many people report success and how many report failures and why they think they failed or succeeded. Keeping careful records is the key to most things.
Re: Re: Credit law for update vs deletion Untrained? Give me a break. CRAs and collection agencies alike spend millions training their people. They have training manuals and have people who train and supervise to see to it that whatever they do is in compliance with all the rules and regulations. They could not survive if such were not true. It is not they who are untrained or ill informed. It is the consumer who is untrained and ill informed. If you think that is untrue then just tell me how many people such as yourself, knowledgeable and self trained for the most part are there among those who call or write to the credit bureaus and collection agencies or are contacted by them? I'll bet you that there isn't more than one in maybe 10,000 anywhere near as knowledgeable as you are that they come in contact with.
Re: Re: Credit law for update vs deletion As everyone here most likely discovered, it doesn't take much time or effort to read through the FCRA and FDCPA and get a pretty good feel for things with just an hours effort. It amazes me that the CA's, etc., seem to not have a clue as to the very law that regulates their industry! I guess it's just a matter of them not NEEDING to pay any attention to it because consumers for the most part haven't a clue. My "ex" now works for a CA and handles their Cap 1 collections (I knew she was evil!)... I have been so tempted to pick her brain, but at the same time I don't want to educate her if she is in fact ignorant of FDCPA.
Re: Re: Re: Credit law for update vs deletion Bill, the advice you are giving in this thread is ABSOLUTELY HORRENDOUS. I have Federal depositions that indicate that CRA employees go thru 1(yes 1) official day of training, briefly skimming the FCRA and those higher-ups who are considered the highest level CSRs ie. Robin Holland, Don Richman, etc. have no more official extensive training in the FCRA than an entry level phone rep. Likewise, the SAFEST and QUICKEST way to clean one's reports is to sue the CRAs as LKH said. Pursuing individual OCs/CAs is much more dangerous and foolhardy as they have the ability to sue or countersue. A CRA can not. Wow, your comments in this thread throws doubt to just about everything you say . .. . For everyone else- listen to LKH, i've never seen him steer someone wrong, EVER.
Re: Re: Credit law for update vs deletion It isn't hard to figure out what a particular CRA, CA or OC will do if you read the archives. You should have realized disputing ANY tl can result in it being deleted.
