I have a creditor who long ago put a charge off on my credit report as well as my wife's CR. This charge off was not supposed to be there. Recently I disputed it as 'I'm not aware', and today was the 31st day - it's still there. I'm waiting on the actual letter from EQ but I pulled EQ today and the charge off is still there. We called the creditor and they said that there should be no charge off on the report, and that they would send us a letter saying such that we can send to equifax. From what I've read, this isn't really enough, and I was confused because I just disputed it and they didn't remove it, so we called back the lady and she said she hasn't gotten any dispute from a CRA in the past month on our account. The only thing I can think of is that we disputed this account in the past and perhaps they didn't bother investigating on grounds that it was a frivolous dispute. I can get a letter from her stating that the charge off should not be there and a letter stating she had no communication with EQ during the 30 days of this dispute. Isn't this a violation that I can sue EQ for? I should have the actual letter from EQ in a few days to be sure. Thanks in advance
Ok, new information. The CRA *did* send them a dispute letter, to which they responded it was paid in full. Essentially they reported that the charge off has been paid in full, but not that there was never a charge off. The woman at this company has promised that she will send out letters to us today that will verify that there is not supposed to be a charge off on our credit for this. However, when asked to simply remove the tradeline from our credit, she got snappy and said "this is as far as it goes", I'm moving on to other work. If it's not supposed to be a charge off, and she admits that's the case, then shouldn't they have to remove the tradeline completely? (The whole tradeline is an 'other account', it just shows a charge off basically. It was for an apartment lease.) What should we do here?
If it's not yours, it should be removed. If they won't remove it, contact the executive office and explain everything to them. Make sure that somewhere here you get a letter stating that the account was not yours, you never had a charge off. If the executive office won't remove it, file a small claims lawsuit against the CA. When you show the judge the letter that says it's not your account, what are they going to say? "Your honor, we'd rather violate the law and report what we obviously know is inaccurate information." I'd love to see that one!!!
Well the thing is, it WAS mine - but the account was never charged off. I did rent an apartment from these folks, and I did break the lease early, but I paid the remaining amount. The woman at this company is telling me the same thing as I'm saying here. At the same time, she's claiming that they don't show in their records having reported it as a charge off, yet I look at my credit report and it says there in big letters: Charged off. There was no CA involved. Thanks for the help
Get your letters from them first. They don't get to decide whether they continue to report erroneous information. You do, but you might need to send a letter demanding correction of their erroneous negative TL, along with a copy of the part of your CR showing the error. If they don't respond promptly, send an ITS. If she thinks her time is more valuable than her company's legal costs, someone else likely has more sense.
Ok, got the letter today. They sent me a copy of the form EQ sent to them for verification, as well as a letter saying that their records don't show a charge off status, nor should there be a charge off status. I then flipped over to the form involved, and the code for the account is 'O9', which according to about 3 minutes of google searching means bad debt/skip (ie, a charge off). So, I wrote them a letter explaining it, and requested politely that it be fixed immediately. If it's not fixed or I get any flak at all, I'm going to simply file a small claims suit against them for $1k each for my wife and myself. Their willful noncompliance has cost me a LOT of money and caused me a lot of damages with a charge off on my credit for 4 years. It's pretty cut and dry at this point. Outstanding.
Re: Re: is this grounds for a lawsuit? If you could prove these damages you could sue for a LOT more than $1000. This might get their attention!
Re: Re: Re: is this grounds for a lawsuit? Indeed. Of course, since I have other negative areas on my credit, and because the FICO score formula is top secret, that's hard to prove it was their fault. It's one of those things we all know but regardless, it remains hard to quantify.
