I used to have a loan from Beneficial Financial that was opened in 10-95. Actually, I had co-signed for a friend. I defaulted on the loan (Friend stopped paying on it) April 1997. The last payment was made on 14th March 1997 (according to Beneficial records). This account is reported on my Experian report as a collection account. Today I went in to have a tri-merged report run at a mortgage broker and my Experian score had dropped from 663 (date of report 6-5-01) to 569 (date of report 7-18-01) The only difference on both the reports is 1 other inquiry for Car insurance run on 7-2-01. After looking closely at my Experian report, I saw that the date of last activity on my Experian collection was changed from 3-97 to 6-00. I called Experian and they will not re-verify this account since they have already verified this account in the past 2 months. I called Beneficial and asked for information on the date of last activity. The CSR told me that the last payment was made on 3-14-97 but they can change the date of last activity anytime they make changes to the account. They say they had the account on hold, thinking that I was going to file bankruptcy, but since I did not, now it is in collection. I even offered to make payment on the account but they said they will change the date of last activity to the day they receive the payment and it will show as a paid collection. I filed an online complaint with the BBB and the Texas State Attorney Generalsâ?? office. I am not sure if I have any other recourse. Needless to say, the mortgage broker who had worked very hard to find a lender who could do a loan looking only at my Experian score (because of my zip code) at a very decent rate could not do anything for me now, since the score has dropped drastically. Worse part of it all is that I have been re-building credit, and hoping to have clean credit in a few years and now I am stuck for 7 more years in the sub prime hell. Anyway, I have been lurking on this board for a while and figured I could get some advice on how to proceed.
You can sue them for damages, I believe, if it causes you to lose the opportunity to purchase this home. There are some experts on here who know more about those aspects of the law than I do. breeze
I would file suit against Experian and Beneficial. They will contact you to settle quickly. Especially if you can proove that you lost financing.
Get a letter from Beneficial stating that the date of last activity was 3/97. Send a copy of that letter to the bureau and the collection agency along with a note that they have violated Federal law (fcra) by reaging this account. Give them 15 days to correct it. If they don't let them know that you will file a lawsuit. If they don't correct it you have them by the gonads and can sue and win.
