Just what I was hoping would NOT still be the positon of any CRA.
Yes, I would call back and speak with a supervisor, as that position is, in my opinion, bad interpretation of the law.
As background, here is the issue.
The original FCRA included only the current provision of FCRA 605(a)(4), which defines the period of running of the exclusion period for a charge-off as 7 years from the date the account was “placed for collection or charged to profit and loss.”
That definition created confusion, and resulted in the use of either the date of reporting of a collection or of a charge-off as the effective date for calculating the exclusion period.
That effectively reset the 7 year period whenever any new collection was reported. That was not the intent of congress.
To deal with the confusion, the FCRA was specifically amended by new section 605(c), which clearly defines the running from what is called the DOFD.
Unfortunately, the NYS statute uses the same old confusing language as the original FCRA, which leads to the old interpretation that permitted use of the date of the charge off as opposed to the DOFD. The NYS statute includes no reference to use of DOFD.
The other two CRAs interpret the NYS provision as incorporating the provision of FCRA 605(c), and thus use DOFD for consistency in application as compared with the federal 7 year period.
However, the rep you spoke with apparently is clinging to the old-school ambiguity, and continuing to use the date of the charge-off.
Hopefully, that background will be useful when you discuss with them.
