Thursday was a successful day around here. After five hours of unrelenting telephone negotiations and moving up the food chain in 3 different organizations, I was able to move on to three hours of letter-writing and document-gathering–and finish up with the menial faxing and mailing of the letters and updating the notes being kept on the progress of the transaction I was pursuing. I was then able to sit back with some gratification: that was some grueling kind of workday. And it had ended well.
Shall I now hold my breath and wait to receive a promotion, a commission or a big bonus? Well, probably not. Because I don’t have a job.
This day’s work was brought to me courtesy of a clerical error made 6 years and 8 months ago when Bimbette Gumsnapper* at the Rear Entry Collection Agency*, distressed or perhaps even disabled from having broken a nail on her lunch hour, typo’d my husband’s Social Security Number onto a collection that she was filing on behalf of a Major Insurance Company for Somebody Else’s unpaid policy premium. This collection was then, in due course, reported to the Big Three of credit reporting agencies that regulate each citizen’s permission to draw breath: TransUnion, Experian and Equifax–where apparently it was surgically spliced onto our records using state-of-the-art titanium staples. The operation was a success.
Unlike the guy in the pirate hat on TV, we had taken the precaution of reviewing our credit history periodically, so we were able to get right on top of this situation as soon as it showed up–roughly comparable to all those people who were right on top of the Titanic when it went down.
We contacted the Major Insurance Company, who could “no longer discuss the matter because they had sent it to collection.” We contacted the collection agency, who had no access to the records of the Major Insurance Company and therefore could not tell us the nature of the charge, but could affirmatively threaten that the only possible way this black mark would ever be expunged from our record was for us to pay the $294 that we had never owed to the Major Insurance Company. All of this contact took four or five hours, and it yielded neither information nor remedy.
We filed an official dispute with each of the Big Three Agencies, who, we believed, would research the matter, leading to its resolution. Instead, they grudgingly opted to take the lowest road that they are allowed by law to take: they added a note to this “adverse information” in our credit records stating that the collection was “Disputed.” When we argued that this was not a legitimate charge, they explained to us patronizingly that we must show proof that we did not owe this money. . .
. . . which dropped us back at the door of the Major Insurance Company which, one would think, would surely be obligated to prove that we DID owe the money–but they calmly stonewalled that they couldn’t help us–because–that’s right–the matter had been sent to collection. WHO’S ON FIRST. . . ?
Every year or so, we would review our credit record and initiate the same five hours of frustrating letters and phone calls. It was tempting to simply pay Somebody Else’s insurance premium and be done with it–except that this would NOT have removed it from our record, it would only have changed its status to “paid.”
Mysteriously, about two years ago, the malignant stinkbomb vanished from the Experian and Equifax reports as inexplicably as it had appeared. We resigned ourselves to living with the slightly smaller shadow cast by its appearance on only one of three reports, continuing to drag down the all-important credit score by which Americans now live and die, and causing us to pay increased insurance rates because of it.
But now, with different motivation, a different outcome: with newly-attractive mortgage rates, refinance beckoned. And the only thing that stood in the way was–yes, a collection shown at one out of three credit bureaus for $294 of Somebody Else’s unpaid insurance premium. It threatened to double our mortgage points, costing us an additional $3,200. We had been angry about this situation for years. But this gave us a bad case of Rage.
Rage can be very liberating; it grants access to The Zone wherein you don’t care how bloodied you become, you’re going to push on until your teeth are locked on the jugular of the problem. The two credit agencies that had dropped the collection were at a loss as to explain why–so, no clues there.
Back to the Rear Entry Collection Agency*, whose fatal chink in its armor was finally revealed through the depersonalizing form of their telephone procedures. My call was answered by Ino Uraflake*, who simply picked up and snarled “File Number?” Well, what the hell, I thought–the file number was right there on the credit report: I didn’t waste any time explaining what I wanted, I simply fired off the numbers. To confirm that she was speaking with the correct deadbeat, Ino Uraflake* tonelessly barked “Is this Somebody Else?”
After 6+ years, BINGO. Somebody Else, paired with my husband’s Social Security Number.
I demanded her supervisor, who denied that Ino Uraflake* had made any such statement by repeatedly telling me, “So you say! You say that we said that! We don’t have to take your word for anything! You have to do your homework! You have to go to your local police headquarters and file a complaint for fraud.” When I pointed out that my local police were probably not going to get too excited about a typo made over 6 years ago on a claim of $294 as “fraud,” he warned me that he was now going to mark my file with an entry indicating I was uncooperative. It was the first true statement he’d made. Are there people who ARE cooperative about being screwed over for six years for not paying someone else’s debt?
Next, a completely new approach to the Major Insurance Company, where I blew off everybody on the corporate ladder until I reached a supervisor of a sufficient level that she comprehended the words that their own collection agency had advised me to file a complaint against them for fraud for using my husband’s Social Security Number on Somebody Else’s collection. Miss Calmer Down* was very nice. She offered several possible hypothetical scenarios by which this collection could remotely be attributed to us instead of to Somebody Else, which even she seemed to understand were convolutedly ridiculous. She promised to “research the matter because it was so very old [TELL me about it!] that she would have to access the archives [her tone suggesting that this would require a pith helmet with a headlight, and a pick-axe] and get back to me,” I enthusiastically agreed, knowing that as of this moment she still had no intention of ever speaking to me again. “That would be great, because since it’s Thursday, then if I do not have a letter in my hand by the end of the day, I can still file the fraud complaint tomorrow.” At the 5-hour point, she was back on the line asking me for a fax number to which she could send her letter of apology for the regrettable error and misunderstanding–and the rest is history.
Her letter is on its way to our mortgage underwriter AND TransUnion. Our loan is approved. It only took 6 YEARS, 8 MONTHS of angst, struggle, frustration and being treated like scum to get Somebody Else’s adverse information off our credit report–just 4 months short of the 7-year point, where it would have outlived its statutory term and been automatically deleted anyway.
There are 8 bazillion stories in the Naked City Credit Files. This has been one of them.
The overriding questions are these:
Why is a collection agency allowed to report a collection without a file containing the evidence in its files that the item is a legitimate obligation?
When evidence of an error is pointed out, why do they fight SO hard to deny, deny, deny? Why are they not obligated to shut up and look into it?
Why is the original creditor allowed to blow you off “because it’s been assigned for collection,” when assigning a collection is not at all a minor act in the damage it causes? Why are they not obligated to provide you upon first request with documentation proving the obligation is yours?
Why is the guiding philosophy of the credit reporting agencies, that all consumers are guilty until proven innocent? Why are they not mandated to research ALL disputed items until resolved, since they have put themselves in the position of gathering and reporting our credit histories? Obviously they don’t do it for free, so why shouldn’t they have to be accountable? Why should the burden of hours of telephone calls and letters, frustration, stress, and financially detrimental treatment fall to the consumer?
Why is neither the original creditor, nor the collection agency, nor the credit bureau subject to meaningful penalties for failing to document and verify their accuracy?
In brief, why is the entire credit reporting deck stacked so seemingly undefeatably against the consumer with no reasonable means of recourse–and what can we do about it?
But then again, probably nobody else has ever had something like this happen to them.
*NOTE: Names have been changed to protect the terminally incompetent.
05.11.09
