Hi all, I need some advice on the steps to take to clean my wife's credit of late-payments made by a debt-consolidation compnay. Here's a quick summary of the events: My wife had a CC from Providian from early 2002 until late 2003, which she had been late on numerous times. Her debt was around $3000. In Oct 2003, she consolidated the debt through AAA Cook County Consolidation at 8% & a $20 monthly fee, which was still less than she was paying to Providian at 27.99%. She immediately began to make on-time payments to AAA and consistently paid them on time until I believe June of 2005 when we got a signature loan to pay off the remaining $2500 or so. We used the signature loan to pay it off becasue of our findings on her credit report. Providian was reporting her as being 60-days late nearly every month for over a year. We discovered this was because AAA had been late on their first payment to Providian, and were thus late every month there-after. We immediately began investigating how to correct her problems. We were told by AAA (consolidation co.) that the account simply needed to be "re-aged" but time and again our AAA representatives were either "on vacation" or "out of the office," or whatever other lies they hadn't used yet. Eventually we got them to re-age it, but the morons only did half the job. Instead of reporting her as 60-days late for over a year, she's now listed as being 30-days late every month - with one month still showing 60-days late. We had to stop working on her credit however, because of our wedding, an emergency surgery, and then me being deployed to New Orleans. Now we're back in the game and want to get this stupidity corrected. My question is this: 1. Whom should we contact first to resolve this? The OC (Providian)? The consolidation company (AAA)? The CRA's? (All 3 are reporting it) 2. What should we ask/demand for? I realize there's nothing we can do to correct the late-payments on her credit report from the time she was still paying directly to Providan. However, any and all late payments from 10/2003 until 10/2005 should be dispunged. Thanks for all your help! This board is a wealth of good information. -JH
Never depend on someone else to pay your bills. Was Providian totally paid off or not? Have you fully accounted for what you borrowed from the consolidation company, and where it went?
Yes, Providian was completely paid off. We have records of every payment sent to the consolidation company, including dollar amount and date, as proof that they were on time.
Did you borrow money from the consolidation company, pay off Providian, and then pay on a loan tothe company, or did you make payments to the company, that they then forwarded to Providian after negotiating an interest rate reduction? If the second, how long did they sit on your money before forwarding it?
That is one of the problems of paying anyone thru a third party. You have no control over whether they make payments timely (or whether they pay at all), yet it's your credit that gets dinged. Was there an agreement with Providian, and if so, what was it? Have you brought the issue up with the consolidation company, and what do they say?
