Credit Report Nightmare

Hello, everyone! Like so many others, I am so glad I found this board. It has really been helpful. I hope someone can provide some insight to my situation and I do appreciate the time you all take to look at this for me.

I have been aggressively working on my credit and have everything taken care of and looking fabulous...with one exception. I promise to try and be brief about this but I need to know if what I was told today is accurate. The only way to get to that point is to give all the facts.

I have a mobile home that I purchased in 1999. The loan was sold to another company who purchased it in 2006. It is a rental unit and the renter makes the payments to the lender (we did a lease-purchase agreement that states once it is paid in full, she will own the home and we will give her the titles) but anyway, she has always been on time with the payments and if she did see that she might be short one month or running a little late, she has made sure to call me and let me know. I paid the payments myself and she just reimbursed me.

So I have a house and I am ready to refinance it and in my plan, I decided to use my equity and cash out enough money to pay the mobile home in full. When I talked to my broker about it, he said that was fine and we talked numbers as far as what I owe on my house, what the "estimated" value is, etc and of course he needed a figure from the lender as far as how much we needed to pay them. I called and asked for a payoff quote that would be valid for 30 days. I got the letter with a weird blurb on it and it was somewhat puzzling to my broker but he put the figures together and if the appraisal checked out, we would be good to go!

WRONG! On August 8, 2012 he pulled my credit and was floored. They are reporting not one, not two but nine...yes, 9 late payments in the past 24 months! 2 of those were reporting as 60 days late! Since I had been engaging in my own credit repair, I knew that was not accurate. The strangest thing is that they are reporting different months to the different bureaus. Example is on Equifax they are reporting 30 days late in 2011 for the months of March, April, September, November, December and in 2012 January (60 days), March 30 days and so on...TransUnion they are reporting 30 days late in 2011 for the months of February, March, June and so on and Experian has different months. They are even reporting to Experian 60 days late in March, April and May of 2012. This just made me so mad because I have every bank statement or cleared check from my renter showing the payments being on time. I called them and asked about this and she said that they just updated their accounts this month and they reported them like that intentionally in order to "lessen the impact" of reporting them all at once as being late. HUH? It makes it look like this account was never paid on time for the past 2 years and what a coincidence that in order to get our refinance done there can be no late payments on a mortgage in the past 24 months. Not to mention I have the bank statements, etc. to prove the payments were made.

So, I wrote a long letter to the attorney general for my state and provided details. I also wrote a letter to the credit bureaus with copies of the credit reports showing the multiple lates being misreported on all 3 reports. I enclosed the payments and the lender told me on the phone that they also have a payment history of our account but if they will alter a credit report, who is to say they won't alter a payment history as well?

Now, the real question I want to ask here (I am so sorry it has taken me this long to get to it but I do thank you for reading this and helping me). I was talking to a friend today who has been in the credit industry for 30+ years. He said that if I can provide proof of even 1 payment that discredits ANY of their reporting, all 3 bureaus will eliminate the entire negative history, period. I let him look at the documents I had and he was dumbfounded and said that the best example I had is my December 2011 bank statement. It shows the payment being deducted from my checking account on December 1, 2011 and nothing was returned. However, one of the credit reports shows December 2011 being 30 days late and January 2012 being 60 days late. The January statement shows the payment again on the 1st and it was deducted from my checking account. He said that alone, plus the mess of reporting different months to all 3 bureaus will make the bureaus delete everything. Does anyone know if this is true or not? Like I said, this is the worst situation I could possibly be in because of course, we can't refinance until this mess is resolved but I honestly feel they did this to prevent me from paying the loan off. Who wouldn't want to collect 11% interest for the next 7 years? As I mentioned, I did file a grievance with my attorney general and requested an intervention from their office, I filed a complaint with the FTC and the BBB and notified the credit bureaus with documentation. My fear is that the bureaus will either remove the lates and once the lender see that they will simply re-report them and put them back or they will try to verify the payment history and the lender will provide some made up garbage to them and I'll be stuck with this for 7 years!

I am so sorry this is so lengthy and I do appreciate the help from everyone.

P.S. This company is a horror story and when I talked to my attorney about it...I didn't even have to give him their name as he already knew it. He said he gets nothing good from their customers and he encouraged me to google them and see what results I get. Oh my!

 

Thank you for the reply. I sent the dispute letters with copies of the hokey credit reports and proof of payment. I'm just so paranoid that they will try to make some false payment history docs and sent to the bureaus when they ask for validation. My paranoia extends to the point that if the bureaus just delete the late payments based on my documentation, and the creditor finds out, they will just put them back.

I have worked non-stop on repairing my credit and went from a 474 (middle score) to everything now over 700 and nothing negative. Underwriting is just so strict on these conventional mortgages that it's not going to go thru with an account reporting 9 late payments in the past 24 months.

Thank you again for your reply.

*Also, I did not send my dispute or documentation to the company who reported it late because I don't trust them and I don't put it past them to go in and fix the reports before the AG and the bureaus see them.

 

You betcha it's GreenTree! Funny how I don't even have to say their name and everyone knows who I'm talking about. They are horrible and after just using Google to put in "Consumer Complaints Against GreenTree" I can't believe some lawyer hasn't jumped on the class action wagon against them.