Credit report dispute

[utrecht]

Does anyone have any experience disputing something on a credit report? When we moved back in July 2015, we disconnected service with Verizon who doesnt have coverage where we moved to. 2 months later I was still being billed. I called and got the run around. I finally talked to someone who said they bill 2-3 months after disconnection and then refund the money later. That's one of the stupidest thing Ive ever heard of and even sounds illegal. I told them I would no longer allow them to charge my credit card for services I wasnt using and stopped the direct billing to my card.

A while later I got a collection notice and a refund check in the mail literally the same day. I called Verizon and the collection agency and told them the story and everyone agreed I didnt owe any money and that I should cash the refund check and pay the bill. It was the same amount so I did it.

Now the account shows closed and settle but it is showing on my credit report as a negative note or whatever they call it and my score dropped from 800 to 670. Over this stupid $86 billing error on their part.

Ive gone to all 3 credit bureaus and disputed the incident but was interested to hear from people who have experience with disputes. I guess next time I should just keep paying for services I havent used for 2-3 months?

 

[mystang52]

I had a medical bill referred to collections (even though it had been paid by my insurance!) and no surprise the collections agency was not interested in the facts. The collections was reported on my credit report; I disputed the negative finding and literally one business day later it was removed from the 2 credit agencies that had that negative report.

 

[MissMolly]

In my experience working in the mortgage industry, if one of our customers filed a dispute the credit agency would send notice of the dispute to us (through a system know as eOSCAR). We would have a deadline for which we could respond with either a justification of what had been reported or a correction to what had been reported. If we failed to respond by the deadline, the negative reporting would be removed from the credit report. I do not know how it works outside of the mortgage industry.

 

[zinger1457]

Years ago I was applying for a mortgage and the bank contacted me about a negative credit report from an electric utility company. The negative report only showed up on one of the credit bureaus and it was the one I didn't check beforehand. Contacted the utility company, they admitted it was a mistake and the negative report was removed immediately. I was expecting a long drawn out process, it actually surprised me how quickly it was corrected.

 

[Senator]

That is why it is generally better to pay the amounts due, and fight to get a refund. For $86 you could have avoided this.

Dispute it, you have no choice.

 

[utrecht]

That is why it is generally better to pay the amounts due, and fight to get a refund. For $86 you could have avoided this.

Dispute it, you have no choice.

The amount wasnt due. They were auto billing my credit card for 2 months after I had moved away. Was I supposed to continue to allow them to charge my credit card for services I stopped already and they already told me I had paid the final bill?

I have disputed the negative remark with all 3 credit bureaus and called Verizon collections dept this morning and explained everything. Every single bill was paid early for over 5 years until this billing garbage at the end. They said they will call me back within 4 hours.

 

[mystang52]

That is why it is generally better to pay the amounts due, and fight to get a refund. For $86 you could have avoided this.

Dispute it, you have no choice.

Perhaps I misunderstand the point here. But I would never pay something that I don't owe and then seek a refund. I'd rather fight a possible ding on the credit report.

 

[Senator]

Perhaps I misunderstand the point here. But I would never pay something that I don't owe and then seek a refund. I'd rather fight a possible ding on the credit report.

I understand, but the difference may cost many times the $68. A credit card interest rate might go up. A new mortgage will have a much higher rate, if you can still get one.

I had a tenant whose husband had a 739 credit score, vs. hers of 800+. There was an extra $1600 at closing for the extra points. To avoid the points, his score needed to be 740, not 739.

If you are not going to borrow anymore, no worries. If you are, I am sure you will find chasing the correction to cost more than $68 in time. Especially if the cell phone company has fine print that says you still owe it.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

Big thing to take away...1) Dispute it. 2) Never, EVER, EVER talk to the collection agency over the phone..EVER! Any communication with them should always be done by mail (CCRR). I had LOTS of experience with this in "another life" and learned way more than I ever would want to about the FCRA and collections. There is plethora of information out there for your education.

Especially if the cell phone company has fine print that says you still owe it.

But only AFTER they verify the debt. You have proof you paid it, they have NO proof that you owe it. You dispute it and then say NOTHING. 90% of the time, it will come off your credit report and will never be seen again. The other 10% of the time, you have to fight a little. Not much, but a little.

 

[utrecht]

Id like to see the fine print that says that they can keep auto billing my credit card 2 months after I disconnect service and leave the state.

 

[Theseus]

This thread reinforces my practice of whenever possible avoiding allowing vendors autopay that 'pulls' payments from my banking accounts. Utilities, cell phone, insurance, etc. - I either do one-time payments with CC, or most preferably 'push' payment to them using my credit union's online bill payer. There are a number of vendors I refuse to do business with because they insisted on the former. And I've got this morbid thought of "What if I died and no one ever figured out who all these vendors were, and my estate continued to pay these bills forever?"

 

[Senator]

Id like to see the fine print that says that they can keep auto billing my credit card 2 months after I disconnect service and leave the state.

Did you have a contract? Or 'free' cell phone? If you can verify that no calls were made, they should be able to see that too. They should be able to find your disconnect order and see there were no calls.

UPDATE: Since you have both a refund check and a collection notice, you should be able to get this cleared up.

 

[utrecht]

It was internet service. Not phone service. So obviously since I moved out of state and since someone bought my house and lives at that service address, its clear I didnt use the service past the disconnect date.

I no longer have either the refund check, since I cashed it, or the collection notice but Im sure they can be dug up.

Verizon said they would call me back within 4 hours but didnt yet. Hopefully they will call tomorrow.

 

[utrecht]

This thread reinforces my practice of whenever possible avoiding allowing vendors autopay that 'pulls' payments from my banking accounts. Utilities, cell phone, insurance, etc. - I either do one-time payments with CC, or most preferably 'push' payment to them using my credit union's online bill payer. There are a number of vendors I refuse to do business with because they insisted on the former. And I've got this morbid thought of "What if I died and no one ever figured out who all these vendors were, and my estate continued to pay these bills forever?"

In my case since they were still auto billing my credit card I had to call the credit card company to de-authorize the payments, but the auto pay wasnt the real problem. If I had been paying the bill by writing a check it would be easy to not pay. I just wouldnt write the check, but either way I would still have a late payment and acct. sent to collections on my record even though I did nothing wrong.

 

[swakyaby]

I used to have a monthly subscription to XM/Sirius radio with auto-pay from my bank account. One day, I realized I hadn't been listening to XM for a long time and decided to cancel. When I called the customer service to cancel, I had to go through a series of questions of why am I canceling, what can they do to retain me, are you aware of these special offers, etc. When the CS realized I was firm in canceling service, she then played hardball and said since my auto-pay occurred 10 days ago, I still owed $4.75 on the account. When I repeated that I would like to cancel auto-pay and cancel service, she repeated that I still had a balance due on the account. When I asked her if that meant she was refusing to cancel auto-pay and refusing to cancel my subscription, she hesitated, then repeated that the account would remain open. (Didn't really answer my question, did she?) I then quietly stated that I wish to cancel auto-pay now, and I would like to cancel my subscription now, thinking my next call was going to be to my bank. She then said, "What about the outstanding $4.75?" I said, "Bill me for it!" There was a brief silence. Suddenly, in quite a different and pleasant voice, she said that since I had been such a longtime and good customer, that they were canceling my service as requested and waiving the outstanding balance. She added, how did that sound? I said it sounded fine and I appreciated that.

Interesting Jekyll and Hyde experience with customer service, when it involved auto-pay.

 

[utrecht]

So this morning I got a call from Verizon from a guy who gave me a direct line to call to get this thing settled. I called the number and first of all it wasnt a direct line. It was a number to a recording saying press 1 for one thing and press 2 for another. I finally got thru to someone and they had no record of anyone calling me this morning and told me a supervisor would call me back. I swear these people are completely incompetent.

 

[travelover]

......... I finally got thru to someone and they had no record of anyone calling me this morning and told me a supervisor would call me back. I swear these people are completely incompetent.

Similar merry-go-round with ATT. Supervisor there claimed that she did not have a direct number to call her back. Seriously, a phone company supervisor doesn't have a phone? I asked her if her husband has a family emergency, does he call the 800 number?

 

[kombat]

Why do you care what your credit score is? Do you plan on borrowing a bunch of money in the near future?

 

[ivinsfan]

Why do you care what your credit score is? Do you plan on borrowing a bunch of money in the near future?

Well, I just got a notice from my auto/home/business insurer of over 20 years explaining that even though our credit score is around 830 we didn't quality for their "best rate" .It linked me thru to a 75 page document of how they score your insurance risks.. They want you have less then 5 credits cards. They want the credit line on each card to be at least 10,000 bucks. Did you have a credit pull in the last 2 years, bad. And the most annoying one, we financed a new car for less then 60 days 3 years ago to get a 750 dollar rebate on the car price. It's paid off..but the ding was a car loan on record..

That's all they had to complain about, but it's all legal in the insurance system.A bad credit score and a non-payment ding will hurt you.

 

[Walt34]

And I've got this morbid thought of "What if I died and no one ever figured out who all these vendors were, and my estate continued to pay these bills forever?"

There have been several instances of people dying and no one noticing because all their bills were on auto pay. This is one:

Woman's auto-payments hid her death for over 5 years - CNN.com

 

[utrecht]

I finally got in touch with a Verizon supervisor who said he reviewed my account and will be sending info to the credit bureaus to remove any mention of my account going to collections. He said it normally takes 3 days or so for the credit report to be updated.

 

[rodi]

Good news, utrecht.

 

[Senator]

Great Job! It's too bad they could not have done that earlier.

 

[Bamaman]

Well, I just got a notice from my auto/home/business insurer of over 20 years explaining that even though our credit score is around 830 we didn't quality for their "best rate" .It linked me thru to a 75 page document of how they score your insurance risks.. They want you have less then 5 credits cards. They want the credit line on each card to be at least 10,000 bucks. Did you have a credit pull in the last 2 years, bad. And the most annoying one, we financed a new car for less then 60 days 3 years ago to get a 750 dollar rebate on the car price. It's paid off..but the ding was a car loan on record..

That's all they had to complain about, but it's all legal in the insurance system.A bad credit score and a non-payment ding will hurt you.

There's a couple of angles to this. Your insurance company's essentially telling you that they don't want you as a customer. The Upper 1% won't even meet their criteria for their "Best Rates." If you've been with an insurance company 20 years, you're not getting their lowest rates anyway.

Insurance companies are notorious for quoting low rates to get new customers' business, and then upping premiums 10-15% a year--using inflation as a reason for higher rates, even with no claims. I change insurance carriers about ever 5 years to keep'em honest--and rates reasonable.

If your insurance company's underwriting requirements are so high, go elsewhere. You're not glued to them for life.

 

[Bamaman]

Utrecht: You can see now how dissatisfied the customers of Verizon are. AT&T's customers are also in the same bandwagon, as are the customers of such terrible companies as Comcast/Xfinity and Charter Cable TV.

All of the major creditors, including these companies, have allowed the Big 3 credit bureaus access to their computer records. No person screens or monitors any reports until they're questioned about them. And they're receiving millions of correction requests without the manpower to research reporting in error.

Hang in there, and you'll get this matter solved.
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Note: I received a note today in my daughter's name on a $862 collection. I believe it's where she straw purchased a phone for one of her friends that skipped out on paying a cell phone bill.

Cell phone collections for Millenials is a new industry that's going to follow our younger generation. They're going to be paying dearly for higher insurance premiums, interest on automobiles, higher down payments--if they can even rate for loans due to a diminished FICO score. It's just so sad that our young are so hung up on EXPENSIVE communications requiring $600 SmartPhones they cannot afford without having to go on 2 year contracts where they're "hung" with overpriced cell services. Most of them don't even talk on phones--texting all the time. It's just sad.