sending out validation letters to the creditors and/or collection agencies when they have confirmed an item that was disputed. I am using Junum and Lexington, so that is why I am asking. Also, I think this has been asked before, but I can't find it. What do you do when a credit bureau refuses to lauch an investigation because the have already "verified" that particular item.
I'd like to know that as well. I have only 1 negative item on Experian, Junum re-disputed and immediately I got an already verified response from Experian. I saw Bill post some information about tieing up the CA (or creditor) from responding to any request for verification through a letter to them while you send a dispute on the same item to the CRA. BUT - Whether that works or not, I don't think Experian is even sending a "re"-verification request letter to the Creditor, they are simply doing NOTHING because their computer screen says "Already verified a month ago". What gets you past the first barrier?...getting the CRA rep to actually re-verify the item. -Dave
Sorry I don't have an answer to your question, but I couldn't help wondering - how effective has it been using Junum and Lexington simultaneously? Is that a common thing to do?
I saw Bill post some information about tieing up the CA (or creditor) from responding to any request for verification through a letter to them while you send a dispute on the same item to the CRA. Yes, that is a small part of what I advocate that one do. The strategy here is that you want them to forget about your demand, consider it silly or whatever and go ahead and verify regardless of what you demanded. In otherwords, you really hope they "tell you where to stick your silly demand" type of thing. It's the same with the validation letter. You never actually want the validation to happen no matter how forcefully you might demand it. You want them to do something totally illegal and against FDCPA or FCRA. The more goof-ups they make, the better. IF they don't make any, you send them the estoppel letter hoping that will induce them to make a mistake. As far as I know, the estoppel has been used in a court action because there are actual case cites to back up the argument, but my understanding is that it only applies to certain very specific situations. But when I use it, I don't care about all of that. The fact that I am full of it makes no difference at all for the simple reason that my only purpose in sending it in the first place is to see if they will either fall for it or make a serious mistake over it which hopefully will be a serious violation of FDCPA. Then I have something I really can use to help win the battle. Now then, on to the CRAs. That's an entirely different ball game. If the listing is accurate in all it's parts, there isn't a whole lot one can do about it. They are right and you are wrong. And that is precisely why I advocate attacking the creditor/cra first. If you get them out of the way by whatever means, then the CRA has nothing to report. Poof! It's gone. If the report or any part of it is inaccurate, then one has a way to go to force them to take it off whether they like it or not. I have a very special letter that I use in that case, but it's application and wording is also very specific and must be tailored to fit the exact situation at hand. If there is any goof-ups in your wording, you will most likely never get to use it again against the report you tried to use it on. Others may arise in which it can be reworded and used effectively, and it's entirely possible that after sufficient time had passed you might be able to use it on that one again if you get the wording right the second time. The technique works in a wide variety of situations, but most definitely not all. But if you can get rid of the creditor/ca first, you are home free and clear. You can't win them all, but with luck, you can win enough of them to get you a long way down the road. For the ones you can't win, there are other ways to handle those too, but they are much tougher indeed. I suppose that one might even have to resort to what I call the "spamming" techniques that are apparently used by one or more of the credit repair companies or individuals, but so far I have not had to do any of that. Hope my comments help.
Ledo, I started out using Junum only. But after a deletion was reinserted on my Experian report, and a few other annoying things, I decided to give Lexington a shot. They are working on Experian only at this time. As results come in, I may switch to Lexington only, depending of course, on the results of Lex. vs. Junum. I'm not saying that Junum has done a bad job, because they've actually done a great job. I have gotten 17 deletions total. But there really is a lot more to go such as lates and 6 year old collections. The good part is that even if they can't get these items removed, they will fall off in the next year anyway.
I am happy to hear that using both companies is working well for you. Could you keep us posted with the results?
