After receiving a letter from my car company offering to pay off the remaining balance of my old lease to re-lease a new vehicle, I decided it made a lot of sense with only 3 months left on my lease anyways. So last month, I went into the dealership and traded in my old lease for a new one. It was actually a great experience, and because of my 745 credit score, I got the dealership to do every single thing I wanted. One of those things the dealership agreed to do—in accordance with the letter I had received from the car company itself—was to pay off the full remaining balance of my old lease as part of the process.
Well, here we are now in August, and much to my surprise I receive 100 emails from all my different credit monitoring programs letting me know that my old lease had been reported as having a payment MISSED (i.e., 30 days late)—to ALL THREE BUREAUS, no less—when that account SHOULD have properly been paid off by the dealership as part of my new lease, and accordingly SHOULD currently be listed on my reports as CLOSED. I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb to believe that, at the very least, the dealership should've informed corporate of the arrangement, and the fact that as a result no further payments would be due from me on my old lease, while the dealership and corporate worked out the actual physical payment of the balance on my old lease amongst themselves. Nonetheless, the result of this debacle is a NEARLY 100-POINT DROP in my FICO score for each bureau.
I called my car company's corporate office, and fortunately (or so I thought) they told me they'd be happy to send an updated report to the credit bureaus noting that the payment was in fact not late, and (less importantly) that the account is in fact closed and has been since I got my new lease. However, corporate made clear that they would make such a correction with the credit bureaus IF — AND ONLY IF — the dealership sends corporate a letter letting them know that the dealership had agreed to pay off the full account balance on my old lease as part of my new lease agreement. Unbelievably, corporate refused to use the lease agreement and related documents as the requisite proof to support their sending corrections to the bureaus, despite the fact those documents reflect plain-as-day the dealership's agreement to pay off the remaining balance of my old lease as part of the new lease transaction.
Naturally, I went physically in person to my dealership the same day, and learned that the dealership manager (who I didn't deal with at all during the new lease process, because there was no need for me to go higher than the sales and finance managers, both of whom I did deal with) is the only person there with authority to resolve credit bureau issues like this. Unfortunately, totally unlike every other employee I dealt with in getting my new lease, the dealership manager was completely uncooperative and unhelpful, essentially playing stupid as to the situation. And the sales manager and finance manager, both of whom were truly awesome during the new lease process, appear to be either scared of telling the delearship manager that I'm correct and that he needs to help me, or are effectively just "yes-men" to the dealership manager, because they have both told me this is something they "can't handle" and that I "unfortunately need to take it up with the dealership manager." The dealership is not claiming they didn't agree to pay off my old lease as part of the new lease agreement, and that fact is indisputable anyways since it's documented in my new lease agreement. And in light of that, it makes absolutely no sense that the dealership won't help me by sending the simple letter to corporate.
Of course, I've disputed this issue with each of the credit bureaus (which haven't resolved yet). But just looking everyday at the nearly 100-point drop in all of my scores while this remains uncorrected is tormenting. Thankfully, I won't need to use my credit for anything for the near future (and, in fact, have locked each of my reports), but this will obviously significantly suppress my score for years unless it's resolved. And that WILL affect me, if uncorrected, given that I fully intend to purchase a home in the next 2-4 years.
I haven't done a darn thing wrong here, I'm incredulous as to the lack of help from the dealership, and I feel completely helpless to fix it—especially with my only recourse apparently being the dispute assistants at the bureaus. Anyone have any advice as to what I could/should do to help fix this faster and/or more effectively?
Thanks a million in advance for taking the time to read this and for offering any input!
