What to do if bank no longer reports to Equifax?

[Creasy]

Hi everyone, hope you all had a great Christmas and New Years celebration. I wish each and everyone of you a wonderful 2014 and may all your wishes and resolutions come true. I got a question that I hope you can help me with. The bank which I pay my auto loan to stopped reporting to equifax at the start of last year (2013) . I spoke with them on the phone quite some time ago and they informed me they no longer report to Equifax. My question is what happens to the account on my Equifax report? It still shows a balance of almost 10K and the date of last activity of May 2013. I currently owe about 4K less than the 10K it's stuck at. It's my oldest account so I wouldn't want to see it get removed from the report but on the other hand it pushes my debt to credit ratio in to 90% territory. Should I contact Equifax and ask them to reflect a balance of 0 but not remove the account from my report? 

[notfancy]

From your post it sounds like your balance isn't 0 yet, but that it is 6k? I don't know if contacting them will do any thing, but you could try mailing or faxing them your statements from the bank showing that your loan is current and at a lower amount than what is reflected, along with a letter explaining what you said here. I don't know if that will do any thing, but I don't see how it could hurt? It seems very strange that the bank suddenly opted to not report to one CRA randomly though. Will they write a letter for you that you can send in? I'm assuming that EQ will treat it like a dispute and contact the bank, and in which case the bank will have to verify what you are stating?

[RobertEG]

They cannot, in my opinion, simply just decide to stop reporting without causing clear violation of their obligtions under the FCRA.

The FCRA places a statutory requirement on any party who has reported information to a CRA to promptly update that information as needed to reflect its current accuracy.  To avoid that requirement, they would have to delete all prior reporting, thus eliminating any need for update.

The intent of the statutory requirement is to prevent others who may pull your credit report from seeing inaccurate information.

See FCRA 623(a)(2).

One option is to file a direct dispute with them regarding the accuracy of each reporting, which would entail a lengthy and repetitive dispute over each item.

To handle the matter in bulk, you can file a formal complaint with the CFPB should you have evidence that any information has knowingly not been updated, and is now inaccurate.  That will address all prior information for whcih they are failing to fulfill their statutory obligation.

However, be forwarned that the probable outcome will be a requirement/sanction by the CFPB that they delete all prior reporting, causing the consumer to lose both good and bad acconts.

[Creasy]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll see what I can do. I only have one car loan thru this bank (no other accounts with them) so hopefully I can get it resolved promptly. I also found it strange that they suddenly decided to no report to Equifax anymore. I asked why and they didn't really give me an answer, the lady on the phone pretty much said that's just the way it is now.