Dispute Process-What a mess

[kiea]

I have an account on my Equifax  & Experian  reports that went delinquent in April 2016 was charged off in November 2016 and was paid in March 2017.  The status of this account was paid/ charge-off ever since then.  The account updated in November 2018 to show as a new charge off.  Come to find out for some crazy reason they updated the DOFD to 11/2018 & my scores dropped.  Now the customer service department have no record of the original charge off date in their system.  I disputed this 5 times with the credit bureaus, wrote a letter to the company, & called the company several times but instead of the company updating the DOFD to the original date of April 2016 they keep updating it to the current month (now it says 02/2019) & my scores are dropping every month because of it.  So, finally last month after 4 months of disputes I filed a complaint with the CFPB.  

The Vice President of the credit card company/ bank responded with a letter that states they reported all information accurately to the credit bureaus but the credit bureaus must have different terminology regarding the first date of delinquency.  He provided a listed all the correct dates in the letter and all the account/ payment history.  At the end of the letter, he states if I have any more issues then I need to dispute the information directly with the credit bureaus.  I sent a copy of the original CFPB complaint & the letter from the Vice President of the company to Equifax & Experian to add to my latest dispute along with a written letter from me asking them to remove the account from my reports or correct the infomation immediately.

Do anyone know how the process works with disputes?  If the credit card company comes back with the same results but I provided proof it is incorrect how do the credit bureaus proceed?  

[RobertEG]

The dispute process requires that:

(1)  the CRA refer a copy of the dispute to the furnisher (in this case, the creditor) within 5 days after filing of the dispute (FCRA 611(a)(2)(A)):

(2)  the furnisher of the information must then conduct a reasonable investigation and respond back to the CRA (FCRA 623(b)(1)(A) - (C)) before expiration of the CRA reinvestigation period;

(3) the CRA must then conclude their reinvestigation of the dispute within (normally) 30 days from the date of filing of the dispute;

(4) the CRA must then send a formal Notice of REsults of REinvestigation to the consumer no later than 5 business days after conclusion of their reinvestigation.

The reinvestigation by the CRA represents the decision on the dispute, and takes into account the finding provided by the furnisher, but the CRA can reach their own determination.  The CRAs normally rely upon the results provided by the furnisher in their reaching their reinvestigation determination, but can reach a contrary determination and correct or delete based on their own determination.

If the furnisher verifies the accuracy as reported and the consumer has provided documentation that is asserted to show inaccuracy, then the issue remains contested.  The consumer's postion is not "proof" until found to be so by a body authorized to reach that binding determination.  That body is the courts, and not the consumer.

Once a consumer has received a verification of accuracy from the CRA as the result of a dispute, the consumer then acquires the right to file a civil action and get the matter reviewed factually by the courts, which includes the right of the consumer to then use the legal discovery process to compel the furnisher to submit their own proofs to the court.  See FCRA 623(c).

The FCRA dispute process does not include a discovery process that mandates submission of proofs to the CRA or to the consumer.

If your issue is that they are reporting a DOFD that is later than the date that they charged-off the debt, you should have little problem with proof in court.  By definition, the DOFD must precede the date of charge-off.  It cannot be later than the date that they took or reported a charge-off.  See FCRA 605(c).

Your recourse at this point is to file a civil action and get the issue resolved factually by the courts.

[kiea]

Thank you for the explaination.  I hope to get this resolve without having to go to seek legal action but I will if I have to.  They have until the 13th the respond with Equifax & the 26th with Experian.  Hopefully it won't take that long.  I will see what happens.  Thanks