CHRISTI, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING??? File the lawsuit. She is bluffing, even if she knows the judge the law is the law...... you can go to the court house and check for lawsuits against them (this is public information). get copies of a couple and see what happened..... maybe it will help you see her differently. believe me, i am a union rep (lawyer w/o degree). Employers try to bully people all the time, until we call their bluff.. call hers... she already knows your are fustrated and is trying to use it against you.. Don't make me come to TX and kick yo A$$ (LOL)
I will do this tomorrow as well Thanks for the heads-up. My luck nobody has filed on them before........lol.
Christi, you could be the one to show the woman that There's A First Time For Everything! Go for it!!!! Tuit
Christi, I am too new here to give any meaningful advice but I would stick it out and file. The last few weeks on this board has taught me more about law, credit and legal strategy than anything else in my life. You may not realize it, but chances are you know more about the law than this woman as a result of your time spent here. These people keep an industry alive with their bluffs. Don't let it get to you. You are stronger than you think and the people on this board are willing to help you at every step. You have an army on your side. I can't believe the help I have recieved after only being here a few weeks. The power on this board outweighs anything this lady's staff may have to offer. There is a quote I think of when things start going to sh!t. "That which does not kill me makes me stronger", I think Nichi (where's spell check?) said it. It might sound corny but it's true, every adversity you survive makes you stronger and a better person. I might be talking out of my a$$, but I thought I would give you my two cents.
Christi Whatever you decide we all support you. I understand the frustration and the fear factor... and they count on it and use it so we'll quit fighting. By the way, I recently bought a new watch with some of my negotiated winnings... I did it so everytime I look at the time I remember to stand up for myself! I don't normally offer this, but I have some very expensive lawsuit templates I'd be willing to send you offline if you want some examples of how to write the lawsuits. they're easy, really. And again, if you want to hammer on the creditors themselves you can do that... it's all up to you. I understand that we can be supportive and when all is said and done, it's you in the courtroom. Is there anything we can do to help you strengthen your case? By the way, I don't know how a judge would react, but if I were on a jury and you printed that out for me to see their intimidation tactics, I'd give it to them in punitives!!! I believe Ender had an issue where the CRAs 'verified' but he showed up in court with validation letters in hand and the judge agreed that, even when the cra's verify their subscriber's info...if the info can't be substantiated then it's removed. otherwise, all subscribers would have to do is make up debts in their heads, put them on your report, and blackmail your good credit so you'd pay them on bogus accounts.. hey wait, isn't that what they do now ))) Regardless of what you decide to do, get a good night's sleep... and look at it fresh tomorrow.
Duties of furnishers of information If you want to go directly after the creditors, here's the FCRA section: § 623. Responsibilities of furnishers of information to consumer reporting agencies [15 U.S.C. § 1681s-2] (a) Duty of furnishers of information to provide accurate information. (1) Prohibition. (A) Reporting information with actual knowledge of errors. A person shall not furnish any information relating to a consumer to any consumer reporting agency if the person knows or consciously avoids knowing that the information is inaccurate. (B) Reporting information after notice and confirmation of errors. A person shall not furnish information relating to a consumer to any consumer reporting agency if (i) the person has been notified by the consumer, at the address specified by the person for such notices, that specific information is inaccurate; and (ii) the information is, in fact, inaccurate. (C) No address requirement. A person who clearly and conspicuously specifies to the consumer an address for notices referred to in subparagraph (B) shall not be subject to subparagraph (A); however, nothing in subparagraph (B) shall require a person to specify such an address. (2) Duty to correct and update information. A person who (A) regularly and in the ordinary course of business furnishes information to one or more consumer reporting agencies about the person's transactions or experiences with any consumer; and (B) has furnished to a consumer reporting agency information that the person determines is not complete or accurate, shall promptly notify the consumer reporting agency of that determination and provide to the agency any corrections to that information, or any additional information, that is necessary to make the information provided by the person to the agency complete and accurate, and shall not thereafter furnish to the agency any of the information that remains not complete or accurate. (3) Duty to provide notice of dispute. If the completeness or accuracy of any information furnished by any person to any consumer reporting agency is disputed to such person by a consumer, the person may not furnish the information to any consumer reporting agency without notice that such information is disputed by the consumer. (4) Duty to provide notice of closed accounts. A person who regularly and in the ordinary course of business furnishes information to a consumer reporting agency regarding a consumer who has a credit account with that person shall notify the agency of the voluntary closure of the account by the consumer, in information regularly furnished for the period in which the account is closed. (5) Duty to provide notice of delinquency of accounts. A person who furnishes information to a consumer reporting agency regarding a delinquent account being placed for collection, charged to profit or loss, or subjected to any similar action shall, not later than 90 days after furnishing the information, notify the agency of the month and year of the commencement of the delinquency that immediately preceded the action. (b) Duties of furnishers of information upon notice of dispute. (1) In general. After receiving notice pursuant to section 611(a)(2) [§ 1681i] of a dispute with regard to the completeness or accuracy of any information provided by a person to a consumer reporting agency, the person shall (A) conduct an investigation with respect to the disputed information; (B) review all relevant information provided by the consumer reporting agency pursuant to section 611(a)(2) [§ 1681i]; (C) report the results of the investigation to the consumer reporting agency; and (D) if the investigation finds that the information is incomplete or inaccurate, report those results to all other consumer reporting agencies to which the person furnished the information and that compile and maintain files on consumers on a nationwide basis. (2) Deadline. A person shall complete all investigations, reviews, and reports required under paragraph (1) regarding information provided by the person to a consumer reporting agency, before the expiration of the period under section 611(a)(1) [§ 1681i] within which the consumer reporting agency is required to complete actions required by that section regarding that information. (c) Limitation on liability. Sections 616 and 617 [§§ 1681n and 1681o] do not apply to any failure to comply with subsection (a), except as provided in section 621(c)(1)(B) [§ 1681s]. (d) Limitation on enforcement. Subsection (a) shall be enforced exclusively under section 621 [§ 1681s] by the Federal agencies and officials and the State officials identified in that section.
Christi! This is BS!!!!! Who made this woman the final word on the law. If you have your game tight! Then go after them, when they see that you are serious and it may actually cost them some $$$, they will come around. Also add Eq to the main suit, maybe the big boys in Atlanta will give Miss Thang a little phone call to back off and just DO THE RIGHT THING. Please : "Never lost a case in any court" my a@#%!* DO NOT GIVE UP, FIGHT GIRL!!!!! Stop his crying business!!!! Cypri
By the way, just as an afterthought... do you have any friends or relatives who live in TU or EXP country? You could always 'move' to a credit friendlier place )) A lot of us have more than one home!
Christi, why are you fooling with your local bureau at all? I sued Equifax, Inc. and Thomas Chapman, Equifax CEO, directly. I had them served by a process server in Atlanta. However I live in Knoxville, TN, and we have a local Equifax affiliate here called "Choicedata." I did not want to deal with Choicedata because they are really disagreeable people by and large. Even worse, I'm a ham radio operator and so is the guy who is the lead executive here for Choicedata; we actually traveled together with two other hams about ten years ago to the Dayton Hamvention, and I ended up disliking him greatly, LOL. (The guy is obnoxious, VERY narcissistic, and thinks that constantly interrupting others is the best way to carry on a conversation.) Ok, I'm digressing again -- time to get back on track, lol... Anyway, I sued Equifax directly despite the fact that I "should" have sued the affiliate instead. (Yeah, right.) Equifax immediately deleted everything I mentioned in the explanatory letter and settlement offer I had served along with the summons. Then I received this letter (which you will LOVE, especially the part about Equifax not being a CRA): Dear [PsychDoc]: I am National Defense Counsel for Equifax Inc. and have received the lawsuit identified above. I am in the process of reviewing this matter and would appreciate the opportunity to help you resolve the disputes you may have with Equifax. To that end, please be advised of several items. First, Equifax Inc. is not a credit reporting agency. It is only a holding company. It does not collect, compile, or produce credit reports; thus it cannot be liable for the actions mentioned in your complaint. By the same token, Equifax's CEO, Thomas Chapman, cannot be held liable either, both as an immune corporate officer, and as an individual completely uninvolved in the matters alleged. To the extent that you have credit reporting issues, the proper "Equifax" company would be Equifax Information Services, LLC ("EIS"). But before you go through the trouble of amending your complaint, please be advised that in this particular instance, it does not appear that any Equifax company would actually be involved here. In certain geographic areas, such as Knoxville, EIS does not own the credit information for consumers living in those areas. Instead, EIS contracts with local credit bureaus to access data for its customers' use. In this matter, your file is actually owned by a company called Choicedata. EIS merely has access to it. To the extent that any problems were raised with the data in your file, Choicedata would have been responsible for the investigation and would have done so if notified. In the interest of resolving this matter as quickly and efficiently as possible, EIS and I would be happy to work with you and Choicedata to clear up any outstanding issues you may have. For your review, I have enclosed a copy of the credit file maintained by Choicedata and accessible by EIS. If there are any inaccurate items on it, please let me know so I can have the proper parties research the data and update your report accordingly. If your file is correct, I would appreciate speaking with you to see what else can be done, if anything, to fully resolve your issues with Equifax. Unless I am missing something, it appears that we can wrap this matter up far in advance of the court date, and thus save you and the Court your valuable time. At your convenience, please call me to discuss your issues and work toward a quick resolution. Thank you in advance for your prompt cooperation. Yours truly, [name of counsel] Again, the report he included had been revised to my satisfaction. I called the lawyer, enjoyed my talk with him, and dropped the suit. Now, it happens that I had them on SOLID violations of the FCRA, and I'm confident that I would have won had I taken the matter to court. However, my only interest was in cleaning up my credit file rather than suing for money as well. (Your priorities may differ of course.) So a happy resolution was enjoyed by all. Given my previous interactions with our local "Choicedata" Equifax affiliate, and having seen how roughly they handled a local friend of mine, I am convinced that such an amicable and expedient outcome would NOT have been achieved had I chosen to wrangle with the local yokels instead. Moral of my story: avoid the local Equifax affiliate and send that small claims summons (along with your explanatory letter and settlement offer) directly to Atlanta. Doc P.S. Finally, irrespective of what their friendly counsel told me in the letter above, sue Equifax, Inc. directly. The Equifax, Inc. counsel is very nice, and you're likely to get a letter like I did. The Equifax Information Services, LLC counsel may not be so accommodating. Your mileage may vary of course, but you can ALWAYS amend the lawsuit to reflect EIS instead if you need to.
Christi, Please don't give up - these people are slime and need to be brought down off they're high horses. -Sal
Christi, I have posted in a long while (though I visit almost daily), but I had to post at this. Do you have them on any violations of the FCRA? If so, no matter how thin, file a lawsuit. If the judge reasonably suspects that you thought you had good cause to file, there should be no reprecussions for you, I would think, in small claims. "We have never lost a lawsuit." Possibly because they were all settled before it went before a judge? If I were you, I'd do it. I filed against all 3, small claims. Experian folded like a cheap suit, and even by the strictest interperetation of the law, what I had was SLIM! Equifax (Atlanta) also folded very easily, but I did have them on failure to provide verify info within the 15 day period. Filed against them to have one legitimate derog removed. Within a little over a week of serving them, I got a clean credit report back, and a letter basically saying "Derog, what derog, we don't know what you are talking about, your report is clean." This after I disputed it 4 times, LOL! It just magically disapeared after they got served. Made them send me a letter promising to not report again, and I dropped the suit. TU, I folded on. I had them on a violation too, and had a decent chance of winning I think, but they filed for a continuance, and never made contact with me, other than to send the verify info I requested months earlier. Basically I wasn't prepared to fight it, it was a bluff, and a week before trial, I had it dismissed. You could always try that. May not be the best way, but worked for me. And Christi, if you don't like what I have to say, come on, here I am! You wanna piece of me, the kitchen's open! Believe me, I've NEVER lost a fight! ;-) Good luck, don't let them throw school yard bully tactics at you. danrs
"When life hands you a lemon. Bust out the tequila and salt." Sue her ass! It might be good conditioning to get the the witch outta her! If I was there, I'd stand by you every second of the way. You WON'T be sorry you did it, because it is to your benefit. If she feeds you a line of shit, feed it right back at her. DONT LET HER STOP YOU! Good luck!
danrs got it right. If they are sued and settle, they technically have not lost. So her statement might be true, they have never lost. It only counts as a loss if they go to trial and a Judge rules against them. The point is theat her statement that they have never lost is meaningless. Don't let that scare you.
Oh heavens, Christi...I live in Texas as well so I have a really good idea of what you are going through with the EQ affililiate--in fact, I know EXACTLY what you are going through. They are impossible to work with until you advise them legal action will follow. Mine got corrected, finally, but was so cut and dry it was ridiculous (letter from creditor that they never wanted to accept..gimme a break). I would, if you can, get an attorney to start doing all communication with them. Save yourself the stress and the anquish--and also let them know you mean business. Right now, the EQ affiliate is probably bluffing--but they are also betting on the fact you'll be intimidated into backing down. I know attorneys are expensive, but this may be one of those deals where you can preserve your sanity by using one!! Another thought--an attorney I contacted said a demand letter would cost about $175....basically, the "final notice before we sue." That might be all it takes. Just hang in there and don't give up...I know it is rough at this point, but don't let them win. Give yourself some distance, either by hiring an attorney or letting it rest for a while. Take care, Mirabelle
Doc, Techincally, the counsel for EQ was correct. The company Christi needs to sue is Equifax Credit Information Services, because Equifax Inc. is just the parent company and they are not directly responsible for the ills of the subsidiary, but it seems that maybe your case was strong and they did not want to go any further with your case. But like I said earlier, Christi, add Eq to the suit and see what happens, I strongly believe if you add them to the suit or just bypass them altogether as Doc indicated, you will have a better chance of getting things cleared up. Again do not let them bully you! Cypri
Equifax and Choicedata What thread describes the background for Christi's case? PsychDoc: If Choicedata furnished your consumer report to the Equifax lawyer without your permission, that's an FCRA violation. What do you think? I love the Smokies in spring.
