I'm in the process of rebuilding my credit, after a very rough patch from 2012 through February 2014 (laid off, medical issues, lots of stuff like that). I began the rebuilding process in earnest in January of this year and have had good success in raising my scores so far, from a range of 580-595 across the three bureaus in December 2014 to 620-650 as of May 1st.
One of the most annoying sticking points on my credit reports has been student loans. I had a batch of student loans I'd taken out for grad school from Direct Loans that I'd been paying since Fall of 2011. They got sold off to FedLoan Servicing in June 2013. Here's the kicker, though. I received no notification from either Direct Loans or FedLoan Servicing that the loans had switched providers until December 2013. And to make matters worse, Direct Loans had continued debiting my automatic payment until December! The result is that all my FedLoan Servicing accounts show me being 180 days late from July-December. There are also a handful of erroneous 30-60 day lates that showed up on my reports in April and May 2013 for my Direct Loan accounts.
Since I started trying to rebuild my credit in January, I've tried contacting Direct Loans to figure out what the heck was going on (I hadn't pulled my credit reports in several years prior to January, so this was news to me). I wanted to know three things:
1) Why are there lates showing up on my report for April and May 2013, when my account was being autodebited for the full payment amount?
2) Why wasn't I notified AT THE TIME OF TRANSFERRING that my student loans had been switched to FedLoan Servicing?
3) If Direct Loans didn't own my student loans anymore, why/how did they keep debiting my automatic payment from June-December 2013?
I have had zero luck getting any answers--I've sent 13 emails and letters since January, and no responses. So I decided to dispute the entries on my credit reports. First, I disputed the erroneous lates in April and May 2013. So far, TU and EX have responded by deleting those tradelines completely. EQ hasn't responded yet. Second, I disputed the 180 day lates on the FedLoan Servicing accounts from July-December 2013, saying that I wasn't notified of the new accounts until December 2013 and had been paying the originally agreed upon amount with Direct Loans until that point, and have had no luck getting in touch with DL to get the payments updated. Haven't heard back from any of the bureaus on that dispute yet. I don't know how I managed to fall through the cracks, but this whole thing has been completely bizarre.
Sigh.
Besides that, my rebuilding has gone swimmingly so far. I've GWd one collection, got an erroneous collection removed via a DV request, have two PFD letters out for collections, and have four GW letters out (PFDs and GWs all sent out in the last two weeks) to remove some random lates on various accounts. My goal is for all three bureaus to have me at 650+ by July, and 700 by Christmas. Keeping my fingers crossed...
