I recently disputed a very small charge off by HSBC and received conflicting responses. The first is a form letter dated 12/13 that indicates my account is being reported with a $0 balance with no past due payments. The second letter dated 12/19 includes specific information about my account and the reason they are unable to delete the derogatory information. TU and Experian were both updated about 3 weeks ago and have removed the charge off, but Equifax has not. Is there anything I can do with the first letter I received to get it deleted from Equifax? Iâ??m afraid if I dispute anything further with the OC it will be reinserted on my TU and Experian reports. Should I try disputing with Equifax? The OC verified it when I initially disputed to the CRAs.
I closed the account and shortly thereafter was able to pay the $1300+ I owed on it. After I called to obtain the payoff amount, I immediately made an online payment and received no further statements. Apparently the amount that I was quoted and paid was not the correct payoff amount because about 9 months later I received a notice from a CA and started disputing. The most recent letter I sent was to the office of the president. Since I had no prior late payments, and the charged off amount was $27, and I honestly did not know I still had a balance on the account, I tried the goodwill approach. I thought it worked and that Equifax just hadnâ??t updated yet, but then I received the second letter.
Did they continue to send you statements after you closed the account, until you paid it off? Did they then stop sending statements, as you would expect for a paid off account? You might want to look at the Fair Credit Billing Act (see the FTC site), which requires that statements be sent by creditors on "revolving accounts" (this includes CC accounts, and you might check to see if there is even any distinction in the FCBA between whether they are "open" or "closed") at least 14 days before a payment due date. If they failed to send you a statement for the $27, and just sent it to collection instead, they have violated FCBA. You are not talking a lot of money here, but just looking for the legal reason for HSBC to justify removal of the negative TL. The removal of the TL is "accurate" because their failure to send a statement 14 days before the amount was due was illegal under FCBA, therefore to comply with FCBA they must treat the amount as only due when you finally were contacted by the CA, at which time you paid them promptly. Hence, for HSBC to be in compliance with FCBA and FCRA, they must report it as "never late". Also, failure of the creditor to follow the FCBA may result in forfeiture of the first $50 of any disputed amount, even if it turns out to be owed. You may need to be a "nutcase", with complaints to their executive offices, FTC, AG, and BBB.
I closed the account and paid the $1300 within a month or so. I have sent three CMRR disputes directly to HSBC and in all three I specifically requested copies of statements and evidence that these were sent to my current address. No responses from the first two disputes, but they verified when I sent the green card and copy of the first dispute to the CRAs. After waiting a couple months, I sent the last letter to their President/CEO. I received responses to that one, but still no copies of statements or any acknowledgement of my requests for them. The letter denying my request to delete the CO does indicate statements were sent to my house and were not returned as undeliverable, but I definitely would have noticed a statement from a creditor I believed was paid in full. I was planning to try a nutcase letter next, especially when they didnâ??t bother replying to my first two disputes, and since I havenâ??t received copies of statements. But the history on my EX and TU reports remains clean and I didnâ??t want to risk the CO being reinserted on those. Will EQ ignore the HSBC letter indicating the account has been reported with a $0 balance with no past dues if I forward that to them? It also says to allow 60 days for the info to be updated on my credit reports, so I thought I could request they expedite that, even though I donâ??t think thatâ??s why it hasnâ??t been updated on EQ. Thanks so much for your help.
Typically, when you send documentation; they send a form letter saying that the documentation that you provided was insufficient... With EQ, I had documentation FROM THE FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION that an account was fraudulently created by the data furnisher, and their affiliates... It took 10 months of sending, sending, sending, and re-sending disputes, including the documentation from the FTC (letter to creditors and CRAs, complaint, settlement, letter from the defendants acknowledging that the account was included in the settlement, etc.) All with the same success, even when taking the disputes to the executive level... Until I sent copies of all of the previous disputes, their responses, and wrote a *LONG* letter which walked them paragraph by paragraph through the documentation from the Federal Trade Commission; via the Better Business Bureau... It took their BBB office two weeks to go through the documentation, but literally the same day the BBB turned it over to EQ it was deleted. Updating time typically is shortest with EX, EQ, then TU... If it's updated with the other two, chances are they 'ignored' EQ... I've seen exceptions, but typically EQ updates are processed second... (Daily tri-merge pulls are good for noticing updating patterns )
