Late payment showing up on closed account?

Hello,
I'm a newbie, but have spent most of the day on this site. I've got a ton of things figured out, but have some leftover questions. Thanks sooo much to anyone who takes the time to answer.

First, a quick summary of my situation. My husband and I have a 30-year record of great credit, until a couple years ago when we merrily started construction on a new home right before housing prices started to drop. We ended up refinancing our 1st home into what was supposed to be a temporary no-interest loan in order to pay off the construction loan on the second. Lots of lessons learned later, we ended up selling both homes in short sales.

We then hired a credit repair agency (ooh, I can't remember the shorthand for that, it can't be CRA?) Anyway, our intent was to get our credit rating as high as possible so that we'd be eligible to get back into a home as soon as possible. (sorry this isn't turning out very quick, I'll get to my point in a sec.)

In the meantime, we discovered something really strange on our credit reports. So there are two credit lines with delinquencies, one is Citi, the other GMAC (which I guess is mostly owned by Citi.) They both show as closed with three lates - 30, 60, & 90 days. And both have comments "accounts paid for less than full balance". And both have closed dates in 2009 listed in the comment section. BUT both now have reported ANOTHER late payment of 90+ days in June and July of 2010, respectively. A year after both accounts were closed.

First I called customer service at Citi to see if they had an explanation, and the lady commented that our file is "stuffed" with disputes from my husband (which were really from the credit repair service), and she didn't know exactly why a late payment would show up like that but it probably had something to do with those disputes. She suggested I fax a letter asking them to close all past disputes and to just look at this one issue.

My next call was to the credit repair company, and they told me that it is fraud on the part of Citi, in an effort to show that the accounts aren't closed so they can get more government funding, and I should just let them keep doing their job.

Well, I've already decided to take it over myself. In part because I've hated feeling out of control - I have no idea what this repair company is doing or saying on my behalf. Also, I don't know if this happened because of them or not, but it's not exactly progress. And finally, I'm uncomfortable with the idea that they're disputing late payments that were legitimately late. I realize I was being naive, but from their sales pitch, I thought they'd work on the items that were legitimate errors on the report, not just anything negative. From what I've read on this site, I can see that the letters the repair company is sending out are probably being tossed as frivolous (which I kinda think is true.)

So finally I'm getting to my questions.

1. Should I send letters to the banks or the CRAs or both to clear up these erroneous payments? The lady at CITI told me to start with them and that if I also send letters to the CRAs it might just make things even more confusing. But I'm not sure she's really the one to take advice from.

2. Should I ask that all past disputes be closed and acknowledge that they were being sent by a third party, in the hopes that they'll take my new letters seriously, or should I just ignore those past letters and pretend they didn't happen? The repair company tells me they haven't sent any letters to EXP or TU since March, but that they've been in more recent contact with EQ. (I'll have to get an exact date before sending one to them.)

Thanks all - I'm really grateful for all the great stuff on this site. Wish I'd found it a year ago!

 

Thank you Joshua, I appreciate your help. Anyone else please feel free to jump in with advice or comments. In the meantime, I hope it's okay if I derail my own thread with a (almost) comical conversation I just had. It's funny how things like this can be entertaining when you're equipped with the right knowledge.

So yesterday I ordered my free reports. I actually just got one of them, and got side-tracked because I realized that I had an account that had been turned over to collections. It was for $78 from the internet provider for the home we sold a year ago, and I haven't heard a peep about it since we sold the house. So I reached the lady at the collections company today and first verify that it was something I'm actually responsible for. Apparently it was for the month before the house closed, but by the time they sent the bill out they had all of his contact info. The guy didn't bother to either pay or forward it on. And they didn't bother to notice that they weren't actually reaching me before turning it over to collections. Ug.

So she says to me, "Here's what I'll do. If you'll pay TODAY we'll submit notice to the credit reporting agencies that the account had been paid." As if they wouldn't do that if I paid tomorrow. Now, before yesterday I would have jumped at that (maybe not the today part. I did know enough to send a check and not pay by credit card over the phone.) But I would have paid in a hurry and been happy with getting it reported paid to the CRA. But I had just read all about non-disclosure agreements.

So I said to her, "Here's what I'll do. I'll send you a non-disclosure agreement to sign, and as soon as I get that back I'll send you a check."

She said: "Non dis-closure agreement?"

Me: "Yeah, you know where you agree not to disclose anything about my account to anyone else."

Her: "Hmm. Let me ask my boss."

(While she's off talking to her boss let me put in a side note that I was tempted to just tell her I'd get back to her and come do a little research to make sure I should even offer to pay, since an argument could be formed that the new owner of the home held some fault here. But I figured it was better to get it off my credit report than to worry about $78. Was I right?)

Okay, she comes back and says: "We don't sign non-disclosure agreements because that's already our policy."

Me: "Oh really?"

Her: "yes"

Me: "So what about reporting to the credit reporting agencies? Wasn't that a disclosure?"

Her: "Ummm. No. That's not the same thing. But it is our policy that we don't disclose anything to anyone for any reason."

Me: "I see. Well, I'm just really glad to hear that's your policy, because then it shouldn't be any problem to sign something stating that's your policy. Right?"

Her: "Um...Let me talk to my boss."

Wait...wait...wait..."Sorry my boss is on the phone it'll just be a minute"....wait...wait.

Her: (finally) So we don't need to have it in writing because everybody here knows that's our policy and nobody would ever disclose anything."

Me: "Wow. That really makes a lot of sense. It's just that I'm kind of funny this way and I like to have things in writing."

Her: "Well, it actually IS in writing because on the bills we send out, on the bottom, it says, 'This is an attempt to collect a debt. Any information gathered will be used in that attempt.'

Me: "Hmmm. I see. So, in the first place I don't actually have a bill, so I don't have anything in writing. And in the second place, I didn't quite catch which part of that statement was a non-disclosure agreement?"

Her: "The whole thing. That's what it is."

Me: Speechless.

Her: "So if you'll just give me your credit card number I can get this cleared up right now."

Me: "Ok, let's try it this way. I'll fax over a non-disclosure agreement. If you or your boss decides to sign it, I'll send you a check. If not, I won't. Okay?"

Her: "Well, there's no guarantee we'll sign it."

Me: "Then there's no guarantee I'll pay."

So, that was actually kind of fun, while still being annoying. Did I do it right? And is there anything else I should know before sending that agreement?

And please feel free to address my initial two questions listed in the first posting! Thanks!