My Equifax adventure...(longish)

Although this is ticking me off, it did give me a good laugh. It's amazing what these CRAs get away with!

I disputed a total of 13 items with Equifax with 2 seperate on line disputes (done the same day) and I got 7 deletions (including 2 out of 3 judgements and 1 collection acct) but here's the rub.

One account that they "verified" caught my eye as being blatantly wrong (no account number, a past due balance, etc). I logged on to Privista to get the contact info for this creditor, called the number listed "no longer in service", called 411 "no number for that agency". So I called EQ a little while ago to ask about how they verified.

First lady I spoke with said "the creditor did not respond", I'm like well why is it still on there. She says that they may have verified "after" the 30 days and it was reinserted on my report. I ask her "so if that's the case, why would your system say they did not respond"..she says "I don't know, but it was report in 8/01, so they must have done that...I ask for the contact info for the creditor...she gives me the same info that I already have from Privista...I say that number is not in service, she says "well you have to call information to get that number". By now, I can tell that she is just trying to get me off the phone. I say, already did that too, they can't find a number either. I ask her what my options are, she says that she can start another dispute for me. I say "yeah, sure, but when they don't respond AGAIN, am I going to have to re-re-dispute". She doesn't answer, gives me a conf. number and basically hangs up.

I wait about 5 minutes and call EQ back to speak to someone else. I tell rep #2, up front what happened and that I wasn't happy with the first encounter. She says, I see that same thing, no response, but it was reported, so the creditor must have responded after the 30 days...So I have no options but to let this next dispute go through...I asked her for the contact info...she gives me the same wrong numbers and I ask for the account number, she says "hold on, oh wait, there is no account number listed"...I say, kind of difficult to have this thing verified if there is no account number, I'm sure this creditor doesn't keep accounts by name alone. She agreed, but said that she couldn't do anything because the "computer" has already said that it was reported in 8/01. She did say that this account is due to be removed from my report in December anyway...at this point I'm just cracking up... I thank her, and hang up..

Moral of this story...online disputes work..less chance for human error! and the reps at Equifax are not that sharp...if you have you your facts straight, and are right, you can trip them up at every turn!

The bad news, after all of these disputes/delets, my FICO score has only gone up 8 points! I'm trying to get to 600, but they aren't making it easy!!