First some background.....my hubs and I are defendants in a civil lawsuit, which names as another def. (mistakenly I might add) a certain mtg. co. in Texas. Well, in checking his CRs, this mtg. co. has made 2 hard inquiries, one in June and one in Aug. We have no acct. with this co., never had. From what i understand in lurking here, this is not permissible and they owe us some bucks. I plan on sending this by fax to them tomorrow.... September 11, 2002 my hubby our house our town WTF Mtg. Co. Legal Department To Whom It May Concern: As per my Equifax, Experian, Transunion and CBC credit reports, WTF Mtg. Co. obtainedmy credit file on two separate occasions, 6-19-02 and 8-14-02. I did not apply for credit or employment with WTF Mtg Co. From the FCRA 616. Civil liability for willful noncompliance [15 U.S.C. 1681n] "(b) Civil liability for knowing noncompliance. Any person who obtains a consumer report from a consumer reporting agency under false pretenses or knowingly without a permissible purpose shall be liable to the consumer reporting agency for actual damages sustained by the consumer reporting agency or $1,000, whichever is greater." From the 1998 FTC opinion letter Greenblatt at http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fcra/greenblt.htm: "Any person who procures a consumer report under false pretenses, or knowingly without a permissible purpose, is liable for $1000 or actual damages (whichever is greater) to both the consumer and to the consumer reporting agency from which the report is procured." Please explain your permissible purpose for your obtaining my credit files. Should you not have a permissible purpose, please arrange for payment of $8,000 ( $1000 liability per report obtained by each consumer reporting agency) by September 21, 2002. Please respond by fax to 00000000. Sincerely, my hubby What do you think? I suppose they will come back with something on the lines of they are a party to a lawsuit and that is their permissible purpose, but my feeling is that if had an account with them, they should have been able to find out what they needed to know without pulling our reports. I haven't checked my reports yet, but if the same thing is on them, I think I will send the same letter for myself.
I just read either an FTC opinion letter or case law on this point, but I can't remember where I saw it. Being in a lawsuit does not constitute a permissible purpose to pull your credit. I will backtrack to see if I can find it. If I can, I'll post it tomorrow.
It's in the Cosgrove-Greenblatt opinion letter referred to above from the FTC. I think this will work and I'm going for it. I just hope they check his CRs again after they get my fax, then it's another $4000!!!
