Help! I'm a very new user/reader of this Website and Discussion board, and have learned much and wish I knew about this before my problem occured. Need help with getting a Paid off Collection deleted from my Credit Report, a Collection Account that should have never been reported and one on which the OC was paid off before the CA ever first reported this to the CRA's. Here's the story: My son was going to Sylvan, but after a few months we quit because we were not seeing progress. I thought I gave enough notice, etc... that I thought I was all paid up. We stopped around middle of December, and Sylvan was closed last half of December for Xmas holidays. Turns out, they still wanted 2 weeks notification that extended beyond that, and so I disputed a month's worth of tuition with them for an amount of $250.00 After a couple of weeks I conceeded and told them I would pay the money, but would they allow me to pay half now and the other half in a few weeks, as I was in the middle of buying my first house. By now it is middle to end of January. About a week later I get a notice from a CA that they are collecting on behalf of Sylvan. I call Slyvan and told them I just sent half the money, and as per their aggreement was to let me pay the other half in a few weeks, they said something like "yeah, we remember." I asked about that CA letter and was told not to worry about it, they would call them and cancel it. I get busy with closing/buying new house, moving in, etc... and send last half of payment to slyvan sometime in late February. I never received any other letter from the CRA. In August I apply for a Home Dept CC and get demied, pulled report and see that I have a Collection against me for $125, that last half that I sent to Sylvan. Called Sylvan and they show receiving the payment from me, I think dated in their books around April 2nd, yet the CA was still showing I had not paid. First, Sylvan made a verbal agreement to me that they would accept the 2 payments from me and would contact the CA and cancel their actions. Second, even though Sylvan got my check, they never reported this payment to the CA they were using. This is showing as a Paid Collection, but with date of last activity on the day I discovered all this and made the CA call Sylvan and verify they had been paid. The CA shows October 1998 as date of last activity, but it was actually paid in April 1998, and technically should not even be there at all! I'v bee reading about using Validation, etc ... but I don't know if this will work. I also thought I read somewhere that a Creditor is not supposed to or allowed to refer an account to a CA until it was 180 past due. If this is the case, Sylvan should have never reported this. The dispute was over tuition fees for December of 1997, and by February or March of 1998 had already handed this over to a CA, even though I had been writing letters back and forth to sylvan disputing the tuition charges. Now, when I try to tell the CA that this was never supposed to be theirs, or rather that Sylvan had made a verbal agreement with me to accept 2 payments from me, and that they received their last one in March or April for 1998, that they should have not reported this as a Collection the CRA's. They said that once they first got it from Sylvan, they could/would/did report it and their is nothing I can do to get it removed. Then when I told them that it was paid, even my Sylvan's own accounts, but April 2, 1998, they told me something to the effect that since it was longer than 40 days since they receive the account from Sylvan, they still had to report it. I feel that I'm getting TOTALLY screwed here. I've tried several times off and on throughout the years to resolve this. Now, the original credit manager at Sylvan is gone. Since this is from 1998, should I just forget it? Is it still affecting my FICO? Can I still insist the CA validate the debt. Neither Sylvan or CA cares about this as it is paid and both parties could care less about me. Should I sue Sylvan in small claims for breaking a verbal agreement? Should I sue the CA for reporting something without verifying with Sylvan that this had been paid? Should Sylvan or the CA have waited 180 before actually declaring this as a Collection and reporting it to the CRA's? Any/All help would be GREATLY appreciated. I have some high-interest CC debt and would like to get a Home Eq. Loan to pay them off, but feel I'll never get approved. The last time I checked, when getting a car loan back in December of 2001, my FICO was below 600 or 610, cause I got the sucky interest rate on the car loan. FedUp2003 P.S. Sorry this was so long, but felt I need to fully explain.
Thanks for the Reply! I had looked throught he Nutcase Letters, but they were geared toward backing off a CA from calling and harrassing people, and if they didn't Validate a debt, then you could sue them and make the CRA's delete the Collection Account. My problem is that the bill/debt was already PAID to Sylvan - yet Sylvan never reported this to the CA, so the CA eventually reported this as a Delinqunet Collection Account as Unpaid ... The debt has been completely Paid off since April 02, 1998 - so .. the CA doesn't care about this and neither does Sylvan. Sylvan had promised me that they would pull this back from the CA back in Feb 1998, as sylvan was agreeing to letting me send them 2 payments of $125 each. They got the first $125 in late Feb 1998, but I still received a letter from the CA... I called Sylvan and told them this. .. they said "Oh yeah, just send us the last $125 and don't worry about that collection notice from the CA, we will take card of that" But, they never did. I paid the last $125 to Sylvan, they show on their books they were paid in full as of April 02, 1998. I thought the whole issue was CLOSED. Not until Aug/Sept of 1998 did I find out that Slyvan never called off the CA, never told them that I had in fact paid them in full. The CA never checked/verified with Sylvan if this had been paid or the status of it (maybe they didn't have to, I don't know, that's why I'm asking for help) and the CA went ahead and reported this to the CRA's as an uncollected Collection. In Oct 1998, I found all this out/on my credit report, I called CA and told them it had already been paid, should have never been reported, etc ... but they said oh well, too late. The CA even called Slyvan and verified this was PAID in Full as of April 02, 1998, but the CA still reports the Date of Last Activity as Oct 1998, the time I contacted them, NOT when Slyvan was actually paid. HELP!!! FedUp2003 P.S. Also, was Slyvan correct in turning this over to a CA even though the bill was only 2 months old, and all during Jan and part of Feb of 1998 I was disputing the bill and was engaged in ongoing communications with Sylvan about the bill? Once I finally conceded that I would pay then a full 1 month tuition in Feb 1998, they had already handed this over to a CA, but never told me about it. Once I found out and called Sylvan again, they agreed to accept 2 payments from me and would call off the CA, but they never did ... but they sure had no problem cashing the 2 checks I sent them Then Sylvan never told the CA and eventually the CA reported me to the CRA's ....
I've read all the threads on Validation letters, LN letters, etc ... but none of them seem to address specifically my problem, that's why I posted in the first place. I probably read this board for about a wek before I ever first posted. The Validation letters and LN letters all seem to apply when there is still a debt/money owed and someone just wants to make it go away, or make the CA refer the account back to the OC, or wants to make the CA stop harrassing the individual. I have specific questions, that I hope someone here could help with. Do I have a case for the OC sending this to a CA when it was only 45-60 days late? What about the OC make a verbal agreement with me about accepting payment and calling off the CA, but then never did? What about the OC never telling the CA that they had indeed received payment from me? What about this was Paid in full in April 98, but the CA shows DOLA as Oct 98? The CA never collected on this account, as it was already paid to the OC, so.... ... should that therefore mean they are NOT allowed to report this tothe CRA's ??? Should that be my angle? FedUp2003 P.S. I only posted several times because afterwards I thought my first 2 posts may have been too long-winded and confusing, esp. since the replies really didn't match the questions. Thought if I broke it down into several smaller, specific pieces, I'd get better and more targeted answers. Sorry, didn't realinze there was a minimum number of posts one sould submit. I'll just reply/post to the most recent entry.
I'll limit my replies/posts regarding this issue from this point forward to this thread: http://consumers.creditnet.com/stra...ad.php?s=&goto=newpost&threadid=48881&pgnum=1
