Ok so I joined the Army in 04 and I had cell phone service with cingular. In 05 my first duty assignment was overseas and using my orders I told Cingular to indefinately suspend my phone service. I proceeded to spend the next 5 1/2 yrs overseas.When I got back I called Cingular (now At&T) and they said they had no record of my account. Anyway I never really worried about it until I found this forum. I requested my credit report and it said I had a deliquent account from some CA that I never heard of (merchants). I called and they said it was from the cingular phone account and was now $882. I told them I didn't have a bill for that amount and I recently started a dispute. A couple of things.
Does a dispute lower my credit score? I was thinking of upgrading my visa to a signature, will the dispute hurt that process? I really don't want to pay for something I didn't do, if the dispute comes back unfavorable TU said it should come off my report in December should I just wait it out? The guy said I can pay $600 and they'd mark my bill as paid or something but he didn't say they'd remove it from my report. Any advice would be great.
Thanks, I heard some people on here saying that if you just let it fall off it could still hurt you. I didn't understand that and from what you guys are saying and from my research that doesn't appear to be the case.
@enharu wrote:
A dispute shouldn't hurt or affect your scores.
Since its falling off this December I would just let it fall off without doing anything in the meantime
In reality, disputes do really funky things to FICO up to and including discounting the entire tradeline from the calculation.
AFAIK you cannot be approved for a mortgage, at all, with a dispute flag on your credit report.
While admittedly credit cards are not remotely in the same ballpark of scrutiny for approval, a dispute on a credit report may well get your entire application thrown out. Not worth it. There's some good resources over on the Understanding FICO Score board from RobertEQ and others regarding disputes and their effect on one's credit report and score.
A dispute isn't really the right way to handle this particular one. Look for Debt Validation in the Rebuilding forum, make the CA actually validate you owe it.
A dispute is just going to have the bureau ask the CA: "Hey is this legit?" to which the CA may simply respond: "Yup" and nothing gained.
That said if it's falling off in short order anyway with the SOL expiring, may not be worth your while or your postage to chase it. It's perfectly fine to let it age off from a credit report and FICO perspective, the only caveat is with individual lenders (wireless bill not a big deal imo) who had the account, may not do business with you until it's settled... blacklisted. In this case if Cingular can't even find the your record it's almost assuredly a non-issue.