This situation with Arrow Financial is now getting serious. Ok, I have a charged off LivingWell Lady Healthclub membership from 1994. Experian and Arrow Financial have reaged this account and now the charge off date on my lates credit report says 1996 (or reported since 1996). I paid this debt in 4/2000. Arrow lied to me and said they would delete it if I paid. I didnot get that in writing which I know was stupid and I have admitted that stupid mistake several times on this site. So, they refused to remove the account after I paid it. Anyway, Equifax and TU removed the account after I disputed it easily. To make it worse, this is not even a valid debt. I got a fREE membership at the gym when I started working at the club, but after LW lady went out of business I got stuck with this debt and didnt know about it. But today, I got a letter from Experian saying the debt was verified and that it would remain (with the new dates). This debt was scheduled to come off of my credit reports in 6/01 as per my old credit reports from last year. I disputed the debt to experian and it was deleted in 6/00 but it came back onto my report in 11/00. This account was obviously reaged or they changed the dates. They are violating the FCRA. What should be my NEXT STEP. I want to make sure I make the right one. roni
Roni, do you have copies of your old credit reports showing 1994 as the date of last activity? If you do, I would make a copy of it and send 1 with a dispute to experian and another to Arrow with aletter showing them how they reaged it. Remind them that they did not delete it as promised, and tell them if they don't at least change the date of last activity back to the original and correct date, that you will sue them along with reporting them to the usual governing agencies.
LKH. Yes, i do have copies of the original credit report(s) which show the correct dates. I plan to send them another letter. How long do I give them to update or clean up the matter. I think the 30 days they had already was enough. The account was originally scheduled to come off next month. roni
That is exactly what I would tell them - that if the dates had not been changed, it would have come off next month, and therefore, you expect that it will be deleted from your report by that time.
Check and see if there are any class action lawsuits against this company. I had the same problem with Ballys Fitness and when I disputed it i came of much like your situation, but that didnt keep them from sending me nasty letters asking for payment plus ridiculous penalties. I sent them a validation letter with a Cease and Desist and they never contacted me again. They never will. Good luck! Godaddyo I believe one of those collecton companies is owned by nco financial or Financial credit cop
I think you should file complaints against all of them with the BBB online complaint form. It is also illegal under FCRA for them to knowingly file false information with the Credit Bureaus. You can prove that the information is false and that they had good reason to be aware of that fact. So file complaint with the FTC as well.
Bill Bauer, It is my understanding that the FTC is a joke. I would file a complaint if I thought it would do some good. roni
The FTC is a joke in a manner of speaking. They will do nothing to a credit bureau in about 99 44/100ths of the cases, but they do keep track of these complaints and they can and have filed real big lawsuits against the credit bureaus with fines running in the millions of dollars. I do believe that in the event that one has a solid criminal complaint against a collection agency or creditor, that it may very well be a different matter. The BBB is a joke too, but they do tell you how many complaints have been filed against a company or credit bureau or whatever. When you have that information, say a company such as a collection agency or a creditor, and they have many complaints against them and you are provided with that information, you can then use that against them when dealing with the credit bureaus. An example might be in the case of say EMCC XCOM. The BBB had no file on them, so after I complained, they will now build a file on the company. If the company refuses to answer my complaints, that will become part of the public record against them. If they do answer the complaint(s) (6 of them) they will already have a history of complaint for filing false information to a credit bureau (3) counts, other counts for using false and fictitious business names and whatever else I can dream up. Then when I take them to court, I can use their long history of complaints with the BBB as evidence of their "evil" record and their abysmal history of chicanery. I also file complaints against them with the U.S. District Attorney's office, the Attorney General's offices in two states, check to see if they have business licenses and papers of incorporation for all of the many business names they use. Are they filing the required number of reports to the Corporation Commission in their state? The list goes on and on, and if they have not covered all their bases, when they get to court, they have a long and dismal fight ahead of them to say the least. Then with the credit bureaus. They claim to have almost spotless records with the BBB. Could that be because nobody thinks to complain about them to the BBB? The credit bureaus are quite proud of their record with the BBB. How long would they be able to maintain that shiny squeaky clean record if the number of complaints to the BBB that they had to answer for suddenly esculated into the hundreds of complaints? How much of their staff time would be required to answer those complaints? How long would it take for them to start dropping the ball there too? Once they started dropping the ball, that information could be used against them very effectively. Imagine a 100 word statement telling the world of their abysmal record of hundreds of complaints with the BBB. Do you think they might just be willing to delete rather than have that seen by their customers? Think about it. No matter how useless a complaint might be to the FTC, at least some purpose can be served by doing it. If we don't make complaints, then how will the government know what the citizen's problems are? How will they know what corrective actions to take? Yes, it's well worth it.
BBB Question On the BBB thread here, say I file a complaint about a credit bureau who has reaged an account by deleting the date the account was charged off with the date it was paid off and has not responded to requests to correct it. Won't the BBB come back to me and say, you need to take this up with the FTC?
Re: BBB Question That, like most anything else in this game is possible. But so what? What have you lost by trying? Only a few minutes time since you can do it on line.
It's not at all difficult to do once you understand the process. It's a simple matter of stating your points of argument and then backing those statements up with case quotes of rulings in similiar or identical cases. An example: Suppose that I wish to argue that an attorney has no valid affidavits or witness to back up his briefs and motions. In that situation, I would simply state that arguments or filings by plaintiff's attorney is insufficient grounds upon which to grant relief. I would quote Trinsey v Pagliaro in which Judge Wood so ruled, saying that while motions and arguments of attorneys may be enlightening to the court, they do not constitute evidence and are therefore insufficient grounds upon which to grant relief. Of course, I would only make my point, quote the case and it's references, and not the judges actual ruling. Never bring in extraneous material or arguments that have little bearing on the case, such as "Judge, I tried to pay him but I couldn't find his address or phone number" or "Judge, I intended to pay him but I lost my job" Those kinds of arguments have no place in a court of law even though they may serve to raise the sympathy of the court.
What are the names and locations of court cases involving the Fair Credit Reporting Act as it applies to time limits for derogatory notations?
The FTC website has pages and pages of material dealing with exactly that and many other FTC actions against companies for various reason. They are all indexed as to subject matter and all that.
Mr. Bauer: Perhaps you are referring to http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fcra/index.htm. Which of those links refer to court cases?
The link you provided furnishes FTC responses to many letters of complaint or inquiry made to the FTC regarding a large range of questions. It is provided by the commission in order to provide answers to most of the questions that one might normally ask the FTC. It is not court case related in any way. In order to come up with court cases and their rulings, you would have to search a data base such as West's Law or other such forum which does cite court cases and the opinions of judges in whatever matter.
