Robert,
The short answer to your questions
a) Are you working on bringing a civil complaint to get the issues resolved?
B) Did your dispute include assertion of any inaccuracy of the debt/collection per se that would then mandate deletion of the entire collection?
is that at this time the only assertions or disputes "I" have personally filed is the original online dispute through TU, EQ and EXP. Only EXP removed the account. It was the "it is not my account" which seemed the correct and truthful statement based on the online options. I have since learned better.
I do not know what CS360 sent them. They do not provide the client (me) a copy of what they send.
AS for B) Once the kerfuffle over the TU misreporting to CK is settled CS360 will be 'reviewing' my case. When I signed up I agreed to NOT do anything until they told me to or if they could not resolve/sue on my behalf. If it comes out to CS360 turning the case back to me I will be carefullly constructing my dispute to make it clear they need to delete due to untruthful and innacurate reporting, specific harms to me, and violation of their Consent Decree.
In this event I suspect my correct path (since i don't know what CS360 wrote to them) is to send the CRA a dispute letter based on their template shown here between the snips:
---------------------snip----------------------------
[Your Name]
[Your Street Address]
[Your City, Your State Your Zip]
Phone Number: [Your Phone #]
Date of Birth: [Your Date of Birth, e.g., 12/05/1985 ]
SSN: [Your Full Social Security Number– E.g., 012-55-4444 ]
[Name -from Credit Bureau Table on instructions, e.g. TransUnion LLC, Consumer Dispute Center ]
[Address 1 -from Credit Bureau Table on instructions, e.g. P.O. Box 2000 ]
[Address 2 -from Credit Bureau Table on instructions, e.g Chester, PA 19022 ]
RE: Letter to Remove Inaccurate Credit Information:
To Whom It May Concern:
I reviewed a copy of my credit report and found the following item to be an error. See the attached copy of my credit report. The error has been highlighted. Here as follows is the item in error:
Collection Agency: [Name of the Collection Agency – e.g., Portfolio Recovery Services]
Original Creditor: [Name of the Original Creditor – e.g., Chase Credit Card]
Balance: [Balance – from the Credit Report, e.g., $422 ]
Account Number: [Account Number of the Collection Accounts – from the Credit Report (if available)]
Open Date: [Open Date of the collection account – from the Credit Report, e.g., 03/01/2016]
[ Basis of Dispute – E.g., I never had an account with this creditor and I do not owe this debt. (Include any reasons for disputing this account.) ]
By the provisions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, I demand that these items be investigated and removed from my report. It is my understanding that you will recheck these items with the creditor who has posted them. Please remove any information that the creditor cannot verify. I understand that under 15 U.S.C. Sec. 1681i(a), you must complete this reinvestigation within 30 days of receipt of this letter.
----------------snip-----------------------------
CS360 says to use this template and that seems to indicate they sent a verification demand to PRA and bascially PRA blew them off.
Once this is done and sent I will dig into the proper "next" steps to make sure I dot my i's and cross my t's.
As you will read in the long version I have had Chase pull an image of the check from CAP 1 showing the return of my security deposit. I will include that to the CRA.
I believe I will assert a couple, but not all, of the factual reporting errors in their account.
I will be handwriting the letter to make sure it does not readily get optically scanned and processed by a machine algorithm, forcing a human to read it. Yes that is manipulative, but considering time contraints and what I assume to productivity schedule demands it might just cause the reviewer to say "to heck with this" and delete the account. This would force PRA to resubmit which then gives me more opportunity to catch more errors.
I will send all communication CMRRR and I will have my documents notarized just to add a level of officiousness to them. basically I mean business. If I have to, I will file suit personally and discovery will be a joy to me if PRA even bothers to show up.
The long version is below and it has specific details and timelines if anyone is interested. If not it is pretty boring.
=========long version from here to end of the post=======================
The account is not a valid collection account. The history of it is as follows. The CS360 info is near the bottom.
Jan 1, 2000 I was told I had less than three months to live. I closed all credit, loan and debt accounts, sold all property, liquidated everything and put in a trust. I did not want my daughter to be caught in financial garbage after my death. My FICO scores at that time were in the 780’s-800’s.
For the next 10 years the doctors bounced the prognosis between dying in a week to living for a couple decades. I was in and out of hospitals monthly for most of that. Private insurance and the VA covered all bills. No medial debt accrued.
Nov 2010 I no longer looked like a skeleton wearing an oversized fur coat, and decided to get back to living and to heck with the docs and the cancer.
I applied for a secured card as I had ZERO credit history at this point, good or bad.
Cap 1 secured, $250 deposit plus fee to start was opened in Dec 2010.
August 14, 2011 my docs said I was back to dying and would not last two months, even with the surgeries and medications.
Sept 2011 Hurricane Isaac destroyed my home, took the roof right off and destroyed everything I owned, including my car in the garage.
Oct 1 2011 I went in to the local Cap 1 branch and closed the account.
Dec 2011, the first week, I got my deposit back and deposited in my chase checking account. (note: I have the check image, Chase had to dig it out of the archives and charged me $50 bucks to do it.)
Skip forward to August 2013. I decided the docs were still insane and totally clueless. I enrolled in another Masters program to regain my certifications and update my tech skills so I could go back to work.
Skip forward to Oct 2016. About to graduate and decide to get my PhD. I also decide I need to get back into life more actively and since my work normally involves extensive travel I knew I needed credit cards to do my job.
I pulled my Free Annual Credit reports on 10/15/2016.
The only entries were the student loans, an erroneous Fed Tax Lien that had been dealt with in 1991 and my VA files had the paperwork showing the error and the VA removing that lien and submitting removal to the Duval County Court it was filed in.
The only other entry was a collection account supposedly from CAP 1 but that said PRA was the credit grantor.
I mistakenly (as I found out later) used the online dispute process for those items and a few addresses that were not mine and couple other pieces of info that were not mine. And I used the ‘its not my account’ reason since that seemed like the correct one.
Within hours TU and EQ “resolved” my disputes, removed the bad addresses and other info but said the PRA account had been “verified”. (note the tax lien was handled separately.)
EXP, 2 days later, fixed bad info and PULLED the PRA account
In Nov 2016 I got a Secured USAA Visa, they reported almost immediately
On Dec. 23 I was able to order a subscription from MyFICO and get my 3B as I now had an open tradeline. The PRA account shows on TU and EQ but there is no entry for my having “disputed” the account and no response saying verified. This is very odd. CK at that time did not show the dispute either but I did not understand the significance of that lack of reporting.
I found CS360 mentioned in the MyFICO forums and did a little research. I signed up and on 12/31/2016 they filed a dispute. And on Feb 20, 2017 this kerfuffle with TU reporting came to my attention.
I do not know what that dispute says or the reason they used. What I do know is that a whole slew of hang-up calls stopped on Jan 5th 2017. In fact I have gone back through my cell phone bills and my Google Voice Account (which is the number they seem to call the most) and have found that from Dec 2015 to Jan 5th 2017, there are 268 hang-up calls identifiable through the Internet as belonging to PRA collections agents. There are an additional 200 unknown or unidentifiable hang-up calls that closely track with the times and dates of the known PRA calls.
The dispute CS360 submitted now appears on CK and CCT and an EQ 3B I just bought, my original one through the online never appeared anywhere. My next MYFICO 3B is not due until March 2017
Not a single letter has been sent to me from PRA.
Not a single voice message has been left for me from PRA
Just a series of hang-calls.
There are about a dozen ‘recordings’ from the known PRA numbers that have 5 or 6 seconds of breathing sounds, like a masher call, then hanging up.
Since the CS360 dispute or verification request or whatever they sent I still not received any mail from PRA. I assumed I would get something but since it is long past their date to respond to me (if the CS360 letter was supposed to respond to me and I am not sure it was) I now am waiting to see what CS360 says their next step is once the TU reporting kerfuffle is corrected.
The long and short of this is the account is NOT mine. There may be someone with a similar name who had a Cap 1 account, and considering all the addresses I had removed it might have been one of them. But CAP 1 would not have sent me my deposit back if I owed them money. They also had my new address and so did the Post Office. I have been at that same address since the storm.
Furthermore, this account was past its SOL when it was first reported on my credit reports.
It is reported incorrectly, specifically on each report it showed/shows on, the Date Opened is different, the Pay Status says Collection Account. On one report it is reported as an Open account with a Balance due and that PRA is my Banking creditor (like they are the OC)
On another report it is listed as a Closed Account that is OPEN, Pay Status in Collection, Account type is Factoring account and that PRA is the OC. On both accounts they report that within 30 days of their “open” date was the Date of First Major Delinquency as one report puts it, which is 4 years past the DoFD. Oddly One of the reports has it delinquent before it was “opened”
While minor reporting errors are not necessarily a legitimate reason to expect the report to be pulled, the cumulative effect is that PRA is masquerading as the OC and is reporting changes to the account, that it has a revolving balance and that they (PRA) have a contractual banking agreement with me. They presented the CRA with a clear statement that they “verified” the account was accurate, yet they could not have considering the errors and differences between the reports.
AT this time I am going through the 2015 Consent Decree and marking the behaviors relative to my account that they specifically agreed to stop. I am quite sure that the CFPB will not be amused at seeing documented proof of PRA intentionally ignoring the ruling of the Consent Decree.
Starting Score: EQ 628 | TU 643 | EXP 618
Fico 8 12/22/16: EQ 658 | TU 682 | EXP 721
Next Goal: 700's across the board
Credit Karma: EQ 554 | TU 551
CK 12/22/2016: EQ 637 | TU 637
