Hi everyone,
First of all, thanks for all great info on this site - I've been lurking for a while and finally took action on trying to get negative information removed from my report. Hang in there, this gets a little complicated....
I have 2 "sets" of negative tradelines - 9 US Dept of Education lines from a defaulted student loan and 8 lines for 1 60 day late in December of 2008 with Sallie Mae/Navient. So annyoing that there's 17 tradelines for what is actually 2 payments, but I digress. I defaulted on the Dept of Ed loans around May of 2013. I don't remember exactly when I started the rehab process, but I completed that in September of 2014. My credit scores all went up, but I honestly can't say exactly how much was attributable to the rehab and how much was attributable to opening a credit card and using it very responsibly during this time period.
Fast forward to about a month ago - I started reading here (after applying for a mortgage and being limited to FHA, not because of bad scores, but because of all these negative tradelines) and went ahead and disputed both the Navient/Sallie Mae late payment (to my knowledge, I had an in-school deferment at the time of the late payment, which was the grounds for dispute) and the negative info leading up to the default (grounds being "it was rehabbed").
Transunion responded immediately - all deleted. I just got a scorewatch today and my TU 8 score went up 70pts. Hooray! Experian wasn't reporting the Dept of Education loans, but I did go ahead and dispute the SM/Navient lates, and I'm still waiting on that. My real problem is Equifax. Oh, Equifax.
Equifax responded pretty quickly on (May 4th) with something that looked very similar to TU's response - all information (on both the lates and the negative info prior to default) would be deleted. Yay, right? Wrong!!! I pulled my credit report on May 8th and the Sallie Mae lates were gone, but the Dept of Education negative info was still there. So, I called today to see when that would be removed. The agent told me that they would have to open another dispute, but that info would be deleted as soon as possible, but within 30 days. After that call this morning, I refreshed my credit report on Equifax.com and to my surprise, ALL of the negative info on both sets of loans was back up, but all of the positive history was gone. I just called, and their agent informed me that negative information about late payments, etc, is not "historical data" and the "historical data" is what Equifax agreed to delete. UGH!!!!!! I mean, seriously!!!? The "evidence" I submitted with my dispute was solely about the negative information, not about the positive information. Why on earth would they delete all of the good info and leave the negative? So, now I have 2 disputes open with Equifax and who knows what's going to happen....
Has anyone had a similar experience? I do not understand "historical information" = "positive information only." Any advice/tips/tricks/soundbytes appreciated!!! Thank you.
Edit: noticed the spellcheck button after first posting. 