Hello everyone, I used to be a member here 12 years ago or so, thoroughly enjoyed getting advice (and even giving some, LOL)...it's been a while since I've been around my credit report, just pulled a copy, and see I have a few things to clear up. Here's the situation: Auto loan opened mid 2004, PIF early 2007. I was a co-signer along with my then GF. We broke up less than a year into the loan, the vehicle was 'hers', she kept it and made payments. On my CR report I see anywhere from 2 to 4 late pays depending on the CRA. So....I decided to call the OC to see if they'd work with me (hey, it's paid off to the tune of 5.5 years ago, would it really hurt them to simply delete the account, or delete the late pays?) ....well that turned into a big mistake....they were jack-a**es to me. I was told that I/we were not 2,3,4 times, late, but rather 10 times 30-day late and 2 times 60 days late. WTF??! really?? So...I asked for the late pay dates, and their answer "we don't have them". I asked how they could get them then since I need to know....well according to them there is no way of finding out. OKAY so how are you reporting ANY late pays then? bottom line, I got no where. They went as far as to threaten me with placing "all" the late pays on the CR reports. They wound up hanging up on me when I started talking about the FCRA (though my knowledge these days about it runs thin) ... So, I can really use some sound advice here on how to proceed. I will FLIP if I pull my CR report in a month or two and see it goes from 2-4 late pays to 12. Is there no liability on them in this case? Thanks!
I would memorialize the conversation in a letter to their corporate office. Next, I would educate them that they can only report 100% complete, accurate and verifiable information. Pursuant to the aboveforementioned conversation, your company cannot verify the account's alleged payment history. Then I would dispute the late payment history on every CR, using specific letters. Be prepared for them to verify, be prepared to re-dispute. Be prepared to be told that they've previously investigated it. Be prepared to write escalated demands to re-verify citing Cushman v. TransUnion and Johnson v. MBNA. Keep detailed records, keep disputing the escalated disputes until you get more Previously Investigated letters, then file a FCRA lawsuit against the DF for violating the FCRA for verifying unverifiable data. Damages are 100-1000 per dispute, per CRA, per tradeline! (so I would use the max for damages). Again, this is just how I would dispute it. I am not a lawyer, but I have a similar case against the federal government and a CRA going on now.
Yikes. Jam is right - the best way to get in touch w/ these CA's (and to keep a paper trail) is in writing. From there, it sounds like they were in violation of a number of regulations offered by the FCRA, but the only way to prove it is if you get a similarly poor response in writing. Stay persistent and, yes, follow Jam's advice above - the paper trail is the way to go.
Oh, by the way, the threat to "place all late pays" on your report is a piece of gold, willful non-compliance in SPADES! As soon as I would fax that memorialization, and I know that they've received it, I would send a simple-dispute letter to the CRAs. Note that the first dispute is simple. Hopefully, the corporate office gets the message from the letter that they send and sees litigation automatically when they get the dispute over their computer. If not, when they verify, send a second dispute, again simple, saying the exact same things... If you get a "PREVIOUSLY INVESTIGATED" letter, then you throw a couple of quotes from Cushman v. TransUnion in showing that they have an obligation to do research a bit above and beyond the standard if they've been alerted to the data furnisher's unreliability. Keep forcing the disputes through, and spice it up with Johnson v. MBNA which includes the duty of the DATA FURNISHER to look beyond the data which is on their computer screen to answer the dispute, i.e. actually getting away from the computer screen and looking at hard-copies of letters and statements which would show if/when the account was in fact late, if it ever was. To keep things manageable, I would send the disputes (since you are disputing with multiple CRAs) at about 45 days apart, since you want to be sure that all three have completed their investigations before sending the next dispute. To document, you want to record. Date of dispute (if faxed, the confirmation page, if CMRRR the green card), the dispute, the results of the dispute. You want to include in the dispute the data that they reported/verified, especially if it was different from their previous reporting. (Setting the objection to the previously investigated dispute, and their unreliability under Cushman.) Each letter will build upon the letter before, so what I typically do is make a dispute for each CRA, then copy it to an incremented file name, and edit the new file to make sure that if/when it comes time to file, I can include each of the disputes into the pleading. ie. DSDA-CRA 1.doc, etc.
Update -- I disputed with all 3 CRA's shortly after everyone's advice, but instead of mailing, I faxed. In just over a weeks time I received update from Transunion. It says: ITEM: Car loan company X Results: Deleted I'm having mixed feelings on this. On one hand, the account along with the late pays that were likely weighing my score down are now gone and I should see a bump in my score; however on the other hand I feel that if they would have just deleted the late pays that I would of had a positive trade-line sitting on my report for the next 5 years (closed 2007), and possibly and even bigger bump in my score. I don't subscribe to get reports whenever I want so I am simply presuming that that is what Deleted means, that the whole account itself is gone. EQ and EX still have two weeks to respond.
Jam -- Got e-mail from Equifax saying dispute is complete. Checked it and see that this OC not only verified, but added two late pays (up from two prior). Funny since Transunion JUST completed their investigation and account was deleted there. So.....although its nearly 2am in the morning, I'm up writing a LTR to the OC and not sure if it's okay, good, or complete nonsense. I'm pasting it for your (and anyone elses) critique: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am disputing account no. beginning with 6433 that previously listed 2 late pays over the term of the loan. On November 12, 2012, I called Nationwide West and spoke to a representative about this account. I inquired about the 2 late pays. His response was the account was not 2 times late, but rather 10 times late. When I inquired as to the late pay dates, he told me that he could not provide that information, that they do not have it, and that all their system says is “10 times 30 days late”. Not being able to provide a simple alleged date payment was late in no way verifies that this account was ever late. I subsequently disputed this account with Equifax and results of their dispute now show 4 late pays. You obviously cannot properly verify this account. You are in violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, section: § 623. Responsibilities of furnishers of information to consumer reporting agencies 68 [15 U.S.C. § 1681s-2] (a) Duty of Furnishers of Information to Provide Accurate Information (1) Prohibition (A) Reporting information with actual knowledge of errors. A person shall not furnish any information relating to a consumer to any consumer reporting agency if the person knows or has reasonable cause to believe that the information is inaccurate. (B) Reporting information after notice and confirmation of errors. A person shall not furnish information relating to a consumer to any consumer reporting agency if (i) the person has been notified by the consumer, at the address specified by the person for such notices, that specific information is inaccurate; and (ii) the information is, in fact, inaccurate. Stating that your computer “says so” that the account was 10 times 30 days late does not “make it so”; might I suggest reading up on Johnson v. MBNA. In addition, the contact between me and your agent was on a recorded line; your agent gave me permission to record when he stated that the call may be recorded. Any and all statements made by your agent can and will be used against your company. Unless you are able to provide complete validation that this account was late, you are immediately to remove all late pays from said account. If you do not comply within 30 days, the next correspondence you will receive from me will be a summons that you are being sued for violations of the FCRA. --------------------------------------------------------------------
You want to use section b. Duty upon notice of dispute. Section a is not actionable against DFs, section b is.
So wipe out this section: a) Duty of Furnishers of Information to Provide Accurate Information (1) Prohibition (A) Reporting information with actual knowledge of errors. A person shall not furnish any information relating to a consumer to any consumer reporting agency if the person knows or has reasonable cause to believe that the information is inaccurate. and leave the rest and send? Another thing...does EQ not let you dispute again right away? I say that bc last night I was logged in to EQ n the Online Dispute section, and this account was actually no where to be found...and didn't know if that was bc they were not allowing me to dispute again?
CRAs can determine re-disputes as frivelous, if you send a fax dispute, you should know if you get a written refusal to investigate.
If you go below #9 of that section, you will see section b, responsibilities of the data furnishers in response to a dispute. This is the section that is actionable, because it is supposed to require manual verification of the data following a reasonable investigation.
Mindcrime - As best I can tell an account is deleted only after it's been successfully disputed. However, it may have been moved to a different section on the site. I would verify it's not in the closed accounts section (or elsewhere). These items can be deleted, but bureaus also have the right to put them back your CR if later validated. (They are required by law to notify you of this when it happens.) In regards to your question about the frequency of a dispute, do you mean that you're attempting to dispute the same account through a different bureau? If so, I would wait for the first bureau you contact (Equifax) to respond to the dispute before disputing w/ other CB's. What do others think?
Jason -- I logged back in to EQ through the Online Dispute Get Started function and checked all areas including: Accounts Mortgage Installments Revolving Other Negative Information Accounts Collections Public Records I don't see this account under any of them. If that is the case about bureaus deleting items but having the right to put them back if later validated BUT required by law to notify me, then I suppose I should just wait out 30 days or so and see what happens. Frequency of dispute -- no, I meant redisputing account again with EQ while sending the LTR I drafted above to the OC. I actually disputed with all 3 CRA's at the same time. TU came back deleted after just over a week I think, verdict is still out with EX.
It could be that the DF VERIFIED it then did an immediate manual deletion to not trigger the re-insertion provision (since the deletion wouldn't been from the dispute, itself). The only bad thing for the DF, if you want to be strict, if they verified any incomplete, inaccurate, or unverifiable data, they have an actionable violation against them.
Jam, If DF verified, wouldn't TU haave come back saying verified (like EQ) though and not deleted? Any verification they do would be a violation against them I would think since they already said they don't know the dates of the late pays. Is EX ususally the slowest when disputing?
It all depends, if TU processed the deletion before they sent the results. To re-submit a deleted item, they just need to tell the CRA, we fixed it. Now, if they say they can now verify the late pays, there isn't an excuse for them not being able to provide you with the payment was due on... Payment was received on... Information for the late pays. It all depends on the CRA and the DFs.
Then TU shouldn't be mailing out documents that say "Investigation Results" if there really wasn't an investigation. Now I guess I get to hold my breath for another week or so till the 30 days from time of dispute through the CRA. Yeah, that's b.s how easy negative data can reappear. Why don't things like old positive accounts ever get re-aged? lol. Since they're required by law to provide accurate data, I would think that they'd have to be able to verify those dates upon demand via a DV LTR.
Well, it all depends on what your definition of investigation is... (anyone picturing a blue dress?) The way the investigation process works, is the CRA sends an electronic message to the DF, saying hey, this few digit code is what the consumer is telling us, are you reporting right? The DF of course, usually rubber-stamps the dispute, because of course, they would never report anything that isn't 100% complete, accurate or verifiable, would they! (Are you picturing an eye roll, now?) The CRA says, hey we investigated, but they didn't actually investigate. NOW, if you have proof of a DFs unreliability, then the CRA needs to do more due diligence, thanks to the ruling in Cushman v. TransUnion, but it's still not a case where they need to sift through reams of documentation to prove or disprove the DFs reporting. Basically the courts have said, if its a case where there would be tons of discovery, etc. the courts system is where that discovery would need to occur, because that amount of investigation couldn't be confined to the periods required under the FCRA. AND, if you have a case where there is a specific dispute, and the DF fails to properly investigate the specific dispute, Johnson v. MBNA provides some guidance that just looking at the computer screen for a specific dispute, and saying "that's what our computer says, YEP!" isn't a proper investigation.
