Why is it so hard to remove
collection accounts?
You send in a
dispute letter to the three national credit bureaus because you don’t recognize
the collection account on your credit report. Almost 30 days later you receive
an updated report from each bureau stating that the account is, “verified as
belonging to you”, or that, “This item has been reported correctly”. You have
no more information than you did before. You’re confused. At this point some
people give up; some send another dispute thinking the results will be
different. If all this happens, you are among the lucky ones.
The credit bureaus are not on your
side.
The bureaus
have a vested interest in not having your credit report changed or your credit
scores improved. Their real clients, the ones that give them the vast amount of
profit, are their subscribers – your creditors. They continuously purchase tons
of your personal credit information to make decisions who to market to and who
to watch or cut off.
Stalling Tactics
This is why
they send form letters stating things like, “We’re sorry we are unable to honor
your request – we need more proof of your address (or, the proof you sent is
not legible, or some such nonsense). We’ve sent clear copies that are enlarged
(for the reading impaired -LOL) and still get this letter. Now and then they
just don’t reply hoping you will forget about them. If you continue to pursue
them you have lost at least another 45 days! It is all done to get you to give
up and build your frustration so you won’t ever try again. Besides, who has the
time?
The credit bureaus don’t always do
their jobs.
One day, a
client came in with an order from a judge vacating a Judgment in 2008. You
would think all you had to do was send the bureaus a letter with the document
and, presto, the judgment would be removed. After the bureaus coming back TWICE
that the account was accurate and verified, I wrote a strongly worded and
threatening custom letter that finally got it removed. How they verified a
judgment that no long existed is disturbing to say the least.
The bureaus are not the only ones
playing games.
I have an
acquaintance that use to own a large collection agency. At one of the national
conferences for the credit repair industry, he confided in me that every Monday
when he came into the office, he would go onto e-Oscar, (Online Solution for Complete and Accurate
Reporting) the software owned by the credit bureaus to communicate back
and forth with the data furnishers. He would reply to every dispute from the
credit bureaus that the account information was verified as accurate. What he
received was a two or three digit code that stood for a specific dispute, and,
would send back the code stating the account was verified. He usually took all
morning to do this without so much as peeking at any of the accounts. If you
sent along documents supporting the dispute, they are never transmitted by the
bureaus. I informed him this was an illegal activity. He argued, but eventually
admitted it wasn’t quite the right thing to do. If he was taking this short cut
how possible is it that others are doing the same? The mentality of some of
these collection agencies, that are huge in size, is; if we can get away with
it, so what – prove we didn’t investigate your dispute.
A new breed of Collection Agencies
It used to
be that Collection Agencies got a percentage of the moneys collected. Today,
more and more companies are pursuing a new model – they are debt BUYERS. Known
as Junk Debt Buyers they buy huge amounts of consumer debt for pennies on the
dollar! One company in a three month period purchased $2.3 BILLION dollars of
consumer debt for $121,000,000. Another had, as of last September held more
than 34,000,000 individual accounts and paid only 2.54 percent of their
original $42 Billion dollar value. There is just too much profit at stake.
A more
recent trick is to ask YOU to provide them all information, (even on accounts
that are not yours). It is THEIR job to prove the debt, not yours.
With all
these tactics is it any wonder anyone can get inaccurate or unverifiable
information off their credit reports as required by consumer credit laws. The
average consumer has little chance. This is why there is a need for
Professional Credit Repair Companies like our company, Credit Scoring Advisor, to even the playing field and aggressively
go after tradeline that should be removed. We average 70.2% success rate on removal of the accounts we go after.
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At Credit Scoring
Advisor we are the experts. We have trained and coached many credit repair
companies throughout the United States and Daniel Sater, our founder, has
spoken at numerous trade conferences on credit scoring and credit repair and
have created several certification exams for the industry. You have continued
access throughout our process to a recognized credit expert. Give us a call for
a free consultation at 631-392-8685.
