It's been over 6 years since I stopped payment on several credit cards. I took out cash advances to try to make up for a bad business situation, and it all went south. At the point I quit paying, I had no means to come up wiht the money to pay them, let alone afford to live and pay them. Between the cards, there's a smattering of recognition on my credit reports. Collectors who reported to Experian reported that I'm my father and they have several aliases that aren't mine, several addresses that are either incorrect renditions of mine and past addresses (1995-98) and my paents address. Also my credit is comingled with my Father's, claiming that I used his social security number and that his good credit is mine. I'm sure mine is on his, or they're the same report.. They also show one charge (more recent) that I don't feel I owe and disputed with the OC, but is in collections. It can't look good to have a bunch of names and addresses listed, how far back can they go, and should they remove ones that are incorrect? Will Experian remove them if I write to them? How should I dispute the more recent charge, or should i just pay it and be done? Will all the old notes actually dissapear after 7 years 7.5), or do I have to ask them to remove them? Any other advice?
Yes, the older notes will, or should, automatically "age-off" within 7 years. Some may linger, and if that happens, you should write to the CRA and tell them that the TL is "obsolete" - to remove it.
Thanks, but that's almost a year off, I suppose I shouldn't have asked that at the end, as my real need to know is what to do about Experian's misinformation on my report, and what it means. Do I just write a letter? How should it read?
If you have the report, there should be an area, perhaps at the end of it where it has the "names" or "addresses" and a place where you can correct information listed such as birthday, SSN....spouse etc. You can circle all the old addresses, incorrect name listings, and on the first round, my personal recommendation would be to leave your father's name out of it especially if you and he have the same name, and send it back to the CRA. At the name/alias and address corrections, circle the problem and note, "incorrect" or "not mine, please delete." Make copy of it prior to sending it out with the corrections. You should get a timely response which will be an updated version of the CR and the bulk of the problems should be gone. Compare your copy of the first round with the updated version from the CRA. It may take two or more mailings from you but patience and persistence does pay-off. With less information on the report, it'll diminish the possiblity of error at the other end with someone looking at your corrections, then I'd start getting more specific in sorting out your name and your father.
Thanks for the reply. My father and I don't have the same frist name, but they list his name as mine. We do have the same first initial. They list 17 addresses, and have a place to dispute one address. I could do what you said, and copy the list and circle the bad ones. I wonder if they should be listing 10 year old addresses anyway. None of the other reports do this, but I think a CA went a little nuts trying to find me, as my official address for the last 6 years has been a PO box. Incidently, that's a great way to avoid creditors, but am I now paying a price? I don't know what the negative repurcussions of this are, but it can't look good having 17 address listed, some the same one with a number missing or added. I just wonder if I should send a polite but business like letter asking them to remove all the old ones (and list what's correct and what years I was there). But maybe it's OK to have the old ones as long as the list is accurate? That would be 4 addresses total in 10 years. 17 just looks silly and seems to make me look like I've misled people. What you said is probably a good idea, not to assume I can take care of it all at once. That probably gives me a reasonable expectation, as long as they don't mind me writing back again.
Take the report and circle - or highlight in yellow or whatever - the 17 addresses on the report. On the *one* line available for address disputing, make a notation "See highlighted area in yellow. Please delete. Not mine/Never lived there/ Incorrect." Make it neat. Remember that the individual who is doing this work has about 4 minutes per dispute - keep it visually clear. You should receive the updated version of the report, make a comparison with your copy of the original, then keep going. You can sanitize and clean up the report, it's just a matter of being patient and persistent. Expect to contact them again.
