EQUIFAX is Deleting Good Accounts And Flat-Out Lying About It

[tmacar]

In Aptil I spent some $4,000+ paying down my revolving credit, going from a debt to credit ratio of 83% to a ratio of 17%. The FICO score simulator said I'd go from 658 to between 728 and 768. Unfortunately, right after I got the 658, I apparently got rebucketed, possiblt because I had lost the last collection/serious delinquency from my report, and my score went from 658 to 602.

Wanting to get my new balances posted as soon as possible, I had sent EQ and EX (Experian) letters on May 5. When I saw the 56 point drop, I was very glad I had done that. Wrong.

EQ received their letter on May 8. I had included printouts of current account info for each account, taken from the computer on May 5, all of them date/time stamped. I specifically stated that if the documents were not enough for them to go ahead and change the scores, I did not want the accounts put in dispute, and that I was NOT disputing the accounts themselves or any of the information in them except for the specific balances. I also said that if a creditor(s) had already updated the balance(s) by the time EQ or EX got the letter, they should take no action regarding the account(s).

Talking to EQ yesterday (May 13), the guy mentioned that my GEMB/Walmart account was in the process of being deleted. What!?!?!?!? They had just gotten the letter on the 8th; even if they had ignored my instructions and started disputes (exactly what they DID do, of course), there wasn't enough time for a deletion due to a creditor not responding to a dispute. And except for 2 (a recently closed CC and a recently paid off loan) these were all open, active accounts. The creditors wouldn't have had them deleted. The guy said Walmart HAD responded, responding that the account should be deleted. Arguing with him got nowhere, of course.

I Called the Walmart credit dept., asking them to put the account back on my report. Walmart said they have NEVER been in contact with EQ about anything, other than the normal once monthly updates, had not received any dispute, and certainly never told EQ to delete the account.

The EQ guy had also told me that my Applied Bank CC account had ALREADY been deleted, again due to the creditor's response to the dispute, saying to delete the account. I called Applied.

Applied informed me they had just received the dispute THAT DAY (On the 13th - how could they have already told EQ, a couple days prior, to delete it?), and had responded to it, verifying that all acc't info was correct, excepting the balance, which they verified was Zero as I had claimed.

EQ claimed that they ignored my instructions, and initiated disputes, because if they're told of a balance discrepancy they are REQUIRED by law to start a formal dispute. They also said they cannot legally stop a dispute just because I, who "started" it, withdraw my disagreement and want the dispute stopped. Are these two things true?

On top of this, they are lying!!!! They are deleting perfectly good accounts from my report, based on creditor instructions that they have never actually received. This is obviously going to hurt my credit. In fact, the 56 point drop, instead of being due to rebucketing, MAY have been due to EQ removing accounts from scoring during the dispute process. What can I do? The reality is that I cannot possibly come up with the $2,500 retainer the lawyers demand before they'll institute a lawsuit under the provisions of the FCRA.

[Anonymous]

I hear ya and I agree. The same thing happened to my wife, they removed one of her oldest accounts popped with a 61 point score drop. EQ and EX share direct dispute info for all bad items that impact the consumer dirty deeds. DO NOT WAIST YOUR TIME ON THE PHONE YOU WILL GT NO NO WHERE. See one of my post related to my recent dispute. You need to call your creditors as you have done and speak with a supervisor, explain what you did and your intent. You need to get his name or the persons name who handles CRA updates and send them a Certified Letter, explaining what happened and what you would like to see corrected. The whole process could take up to 45 days for the accounts to re-report and the scores to rebound. Hoefully the creditor has all your payment history and was not running mothly/yearly with CRA.

[tmacar]

It actually looks like it might all straighten out eventually. One of the creditors EQ says they deleted pointed out that they will be doing the regular monthly update on the 23rd, at which time all the info (all the dates, balance, payment history, everything) will be sent to EQ, and that should get the account listed again. So MAYBE by this time next month everything will be OK again.

BUT, I don't have the time. On May 5 I went to 658. Based on that score, the FICO simulator said that with a revolving pay down of about $3,500 (a pay down I had already done, but new balances weren't showing yet then), I was going to go to between 728 and 768. Since the simulator could not be "told" the pay down was also going to result in 3 accounts with zero balances and also pay off an installment loan a couple months early, I would probably have been in the upper part of that range.

Then on the 9th I lost 56 points and dropped to 602. The ONLY change was the appearance of a new $2,500 credit union loan. From 602, the simulator said I'd only go to 655 - 695 when the new balances posted. Went nuts trying to figure out what happened, finally decided I must have gotten rebucketed.

Then on the 13th EQ tells me that one acc't was deleted and another was about to be deleted. (See first post in this string) Now I'm wondering - putting an account into dispute pulls it out of the scoring process, I believe. If EQ put disputes on all my open acct's and that pulled them out of scoring, maybe that is where the 56 points went.

Or maybe not. I don't see any dispute note in the account remarks. Does that get put in as soon as an acc't goes into dispute? Also, FICO is obviously looking at those acct's at least for purposes of explaining my good and bad points. Remarks in Understanding Your Credit, Credit At a Glance, and Credit Summary obviously refer to the open acct's. So DID they get pulled out of scoring? I just don't know.

Anyway, I have a time problem. Based on my score going over 720 as it once looked like it was going to, a dealer told me he'd give me a 5.5% no down payment loan on a new vehicle that has $5,000 in rebates on it. The rebates expire at the end of May. A LARGE time problem.

[Anonymous]

Did the point drop occur before or after EQ and EX started the disputes?

The accounts are more than likely excluded from scoring until dispute is over.

However, I want to point out a few things.

1) You called them after a dispute was initiated, you likely added 15 days to the disptue time. Which means they have 45 days from the day they received the letter to close the disputes.

2) Accounts will not update during a dispute, from my experience. Any updates the creditors report or the CRA post will not show on the accounts until the disputes are closed.

3) It's too late for you, but for anyone in the future reading, if you are waiting on account balances to update, ALWAYS call the creditor first and ask them when their normal updating period is!!!!

EQ and EX do not share information. It would be like Wal-Mart and K-Mart sharing information. They are competitors.

[tmacar]

Prob is that I can't really be sure. My letter was actually delivered to EQ on May 8. EQ says they got it on May 9. I suspect this means they entered it in their computer on May 9, so that must be when they started working on it. I lost the 56 pts. on May 9.

However, there were also some pretty radical changes in what I was getting scolded for on the FICO site, and I had also lost some serious derog. The derogs were gone as of May 5 when I went to 658, I don't know if they dropped earlier than that or not. They had still been on the report on March 1.

Anyway, losing your last collection and serious lates CAN cause rebucketing, and changes in what you get scolded and praised for are apparently often indicators of a rebucketing.

Plus FICO still refers to the acct's in their explanation stuff, would they do that if they had been removed from scoring? And there's no dispute notation in any of the acct's, but that may only get added if what the consumer complained about stays the same when the dispute is finished.

Like I said, I dunno. Either way, I don't think I'll get my 720 by the end of this month.

Y'know, there's another weird thing. I have the MYFICO Scorewatch. They're supposed to email me whenever my score changes. On the 11th or 12th, when the first 3 of my balance drops had posted (naturally, the 3 smallest drops) I got 3 points back, went to 605. I still haven't gotten a Scorewatch email telling me about that.

[Anonymous]

tmacar wrote:
Prob is that I can't really be sure. My letter was actually delivered to EQ on May 8. EQ says they got it on May 9. I suspect this means they entered it in their computer on May 9, so that must be when they started working on it. I lost the 56 pts. on May 9.

If they started the dispute on May 9th, and you lost 56 points on May 9th, I think I would be safe in saying the 56 point loss was from the TL being removed from scoring while in dispute.

However, there were also some pretty radical changes in what I was getting scolded for on the FICO site, and I had also lost some serious derog. The derogs were gone as of May 5 when I went to 658, I don't know if they dropped earlier than that or not. They had still been on the report on March 1.

IF on May 5, all your collections, etc were gone and your score was 658 then they have nothing to do with the score drop on May 9th. If you got rebucketed for the collections being gone, that would have been reflected on May 5th as well.

Anyway, losing your last collection and serious lates CAN cause rebucketing, and changes in what you get scolded and praised for are apparently often indicators of a rebucketing.

True, going from having to collections to not having collections can cause rebucketing. That would have happened when the collection was removed, not a few days later.

Plus FICO still refers to the acct's in their explanation stuff, would they do that if they had been removed from scoring? And there's no dispute notation in any of the acct's, but that may only get added if what the consumer complained about stays the same when the dispute is finished.

As soon as a account is in dispute, it will say something like "account in dispute, re-investigation in progress". What do you mean "FICO still refers to the acct's in their explanation stuff"  Do you mean the collections or the high util? And when are they complaining, on May 5th or May 9th?

Like I said, I dunno. Either way, I don't think I'll get my 720 by the end of this month.

Unless Equifax closes the disputes early, I highly doubt it.

Y'know, there's another weird thing. I have the MYFICO Scorewatch. They're supposed to email me whenever my score changes. On the 11th or 12th, when the first 3 of my balance drops had posted (naturally, the 3 smallest drops) I got 3 points back, went to 605. I still haven't gotten a Scorewatch email telling me about that.

Message Edited by sidewinder on 05-15-2008 06:54 AM

[tmacar]

Here are all FICO's comments for March 1, when I had 623, May 5, when I had 658, and May 10, when I had 602 (I discovered the drop really happened on May 9, the same day EQ started working on my letter about balances, but I didn't get an email notification until May 10 - it's a real good bet I'd have found the same remarks on May 9 as I found on May 10).

On March 1, at 623, I had the following:

Payment History: NOT GOOD
Amount of Debt: NOT GOOD
Length of Credit History: GOOD
Amount of New Credit: NOT GOOD

Credit At A Glance had Red Flags for:
Late Payments (6)
Accounts With Balances (13)
Accounts Opened In Past Year (6)
Collections (1)

Understanding Your Score had (bad):
A Collection and a Serious Delinquency (1 Coll, 3 Accts w/60+ day lates)
Heavy Use Of Revolving Credit (83%)
Short Credit History (9 yrs 7 mos, avg. age 3 yrs)
Recently Looking For Credit (6 inquiries)
and(good):
Recently Paying Bills On Time (Last late 5 yrs 11 mos ago)
Many Accounts In Good Standing (13)

On May 5, at 658, I had the following:

Payment History: GREAT
Amount of Debt: NOT GOOD
Length of Credit History: GOOD
Amount of New Credit: GOOD

Credit At A Glance had Red Flags For:
Accounts With Balances (13)

Understanding Your Score had (bad):
Heavy Use of Revolving Credit (76%)
Short Credit History (9 yrs 9 mos, avg. age 3 yrs)
Recently Looking For Credit (5 inquiries)
Recently Opened a New Account (10 mos ago) [where was this one on Mar 1?]
and (good):
You Have Missed No Payments On Your Credit Accounts
You've Been Careful In How Many Credit Accounts You've Recently Opened [HOW does this square with Recently Opened A New Account being negative?]

On May 10, at 602, I had the following:
[Really May 12, but the May 10 and May 12 reports are absolutely identical except for 3 small bal. drops that caused a 3 point gain to 605 - I had pulled EQ at the EQ site on May 10, and except for the 3 bal drops and the added 3 pts, it was line for line identical to the one I pulled at the FICO site, in order to see the "scolds and praises", on May 12)]

Payment History: GREAT
Amount of Debt: NOT GOOD
Length of Credit History: GOOD
Amount of New Debt: NOT GOOD

Credit At a Glance had Red Flags For:
Accounts With Balances (14)
[If New Debt is NOT GOOD, why no red flag on Accounts Opened In Past Year (2)?]

Understanding Your Score had (bad):
Heavy Use of Revolving Credit (57%)
Recently Opened a New Account (1 month ago)
Short Credit History (9 yrs 9 mos, avg. age 3 yrs)
Consumer Finance Account on Report (4 Acct's)[This hasn't changed since Dec. '06, AND I don't have 4, only 3, and one is an Auto Loan - does that still count as a CFL? - AND one of them was paid off last month, just hasn't reported yet]
And (good):
No Missed Payments on Your Credit Accounts

IF all the accounts with balance problems had been pulled from scoring, there would be NO revolving percent, because they included every single open account I have except a CF company Auto Loan. Also, there would not be a 3 yr average age on acc'ts, because all accounts opened within the last couple years were included ion the balance disputes. Unless maybe they were averaging the single auto loan with the old closed acc'ts. But that doesn't make sense either, since that 3 yr avg. age hasn't changed since March 1, when none of the open acc'ts were in dispute. Would FICO talk about acct's they were not using for the score?

That's the whole picture. What's STRANGEST is that all the info on March 1 is worse than May 10, but Mar 1 was 623 and May 10 was 602.

ALSO, I just got a FICO Scorewatch notice that an account's info had changed, and my score had increased 39 points, to 644.

The balance drops by themselves could not have caused this increase. Only 5 acc'ts have reported the new balances now. And 4 of them, $239 to $104, $68 to $29, $989 to $313, and $293 to $77, had already shown up by the 12th, when I was at 605. (3 of that 605 was due to 3 added drops. On May 10, at 602, only 2 of these 4 drops had already shown up. When I just went up 39 pts to 644, the only new bal. drop was one from $1 to $0. I don't think one more balance drop, of only one dollar, could have raised my score by 39 pts.

However, ending disputes on several accounts, and putting them back into the scoring calculation, COULD have resulted in 39 pts.

I'm beginning to think that maybe the idiot I talked to at EQ misread something on his computer, and when he told me acc'ts were being deleted what was really happening was that the disputes on those acc'ts were being deleted, not the acc'ts themselves.

He said Walmart was being deleted - Walmart had updated the balance on May 1, with their normal monthly update. He said Applied was being deleted - Applied had responded to the dispute that very day, verifying all the acc't info except the balance, which they verified as zero, which was what I claimed in my letter. The balances on both those acct's then matched what I had claimed, so there was no longer any disagreement. It would make sense to stop the disputes at that time.

MAYBE I'm going back up as disputes are ended, so if the 56 pt drop was from all open acc'ts being taken out of scoring, I'll get it all back when all the disputes are closed. If that IS the case, I'll also still go to somewhere between 728 and 768 with all the pay offs and pay downs I did in late April. Even if that does happen, I doubt it'll happen by the 30th.

Sheesh. This is SO darned confusing.

[tmacar]

Just got another Scorewatch alert. NOW they tell me an account was updated and my score dropped. Applied Bank changed They ALREADY told me that yesterday.

What had changed on Applied yesterday was balance from $1 to $0, and for some reason High Credit from $559 to $0!! Don't think that could have hurt, the $559 showed I went overlimit at some time. Those changes showed when I went to 644.

NOW my score dropped again, this time by 3 pts., so I'm back down to 441. Applied did change again. But the ONLY thing that has changed now that I've gone back down to 441 is that Date of Last Activity for some reason changed from 4/2008 to N/A. ould DOLA going to N/A have cost me 3 pts? Keep in mind, this account is closed anyway and has been listed as closed for some months now. The only thing I've done since closing it has been to send payments.

In fact, more corrected balances have shown up as of today. That should have taken those acc'ts out of dispute, and that, together with the decrease in revolving debt, should have RAISED my score, not cost me 3 pts.

At 644 I only had 5 new balances reported, and was at a 63% ratio. Now I have 8 acc'ts with corrected balances reported and they have me at 39% usage. I'd think I would have gone up, not down. I pulled today's from EQ, not from FICO. EQ's summary figures (total balances and total limits) include ALL the acc'ts, even the ones which supposedly have disputes on them and have not yet been corrected. And remember5, it seemed to me that some of the FICO scolds and praises referred to acc'ts that were under dispute.

Could it be that they keep using all the acc'ts for the numbers and the remarks they show to us, but only use the non-dispute acc'ts when they do the score?

Based on several things I've noticed, I think FICO score changes lag behind changes in the actual EQ report by about a day, so maybe tomorrow I'll go up again tomorrow.

Like I said, I just dunno.

[tmacar]

Well, it appears to be good news, but it's still confusing. Scorewatch just told me I went back up, this time to 670, 12 more than I had when I lost the 56 pts. on the 9th. It looks like the FICO score IS somewhat behind the actual EQ changes.

What's confusing, however, is that they only say that 1 account showed a change, a drop on Capital One from $471 to $129. When I pulled EQ yesterday, there were 2 other new drops showing on it, Chevron from $531 to $131, and a Master Card from $477 to $0. So maybe Cap One actually showed up on EQ a day before the other 2 did (I haven't been pulling every single day - maybe I should, since it's free at the EQ site), and FICO is 2 days behind instead of just 1, and will tell me about Chevron and the MC, and raise my score again, tomorrow. I sure hope so.

But I STILL can't tell if they actually pulled acct's out of scoring, or exactly when they get put back in, or what effect that is having on my score, because the balance decreases themselves obviously affect it.

[tmacar]

Sidewinder,

It's looking like you were exactly right, and also as if EQ isn't deleting acc'ts. The idiot telephone rep. who told me they were must have been misreading something that said the account's dispute was being deleted. As of May 16, the loan that I paid off last month (from a consumer finance company) and all my revolving acc'ts, except for 3, have updated balances. I'm assuming that the updated balance, agreeing with the balance I had in my letter to EQ, would have ended the dispute.

My score is going back up and is now 670. That's with a 39% ratio and one revolving acc't at zero balance.

Three more need to update, and when that happens, if everything is back in the scoring process, I'll be at 18%, with a total of 3 revolving acc'ts (out of 10 that are still open) at zero balance.

Since I'm at 670 and still showing as above 30%, I now have some hope that I will still break 720 when everything is done. I don't have much hope it'll happen before the 31st, though.

And please tell me how you get this thing to show red text. I don't see, for example, a way to use HTML here.