I've been working the saturation method for a little while with GW letters to Cap One in hopes of getting them to agree to remove some or all of some late payments from 2017. I had a very nice woman contact me three days in a row by phone, the first two I ignored because they said "spam" on my caller ID. She said they couldn't remove the lates because of the FCRA. I was polite and professional and noted to them that I am a lawyer (and I actually am a lawyer (civil litigator and former prosecutor)) and the FCRA doesn't prevent them removing those lates at all. She hemmed and hawed and I realized that I wasn't speaking with someone who has authority, but rather just a CSR who is the messenger. I said perhaps what she meant was that the Cap One's contracts with the CRAs is the problematic area, but even then, there is not really an actionable reason that they can't remove even the most recent or the most serious late payment entries. After all, it is common practice in the credit arena to remove a late when it's a one time event for a good customer. So it's either a breach or it's not. She then finally gave me an answer about which I wasn't happy, but that at least made some logical sense. That is, she said we cannot change those entries or else it wouldn't be fair to everyone else with similar issues with their credit. That got me thinking, I could keep up my saturation campaign I suppose, but the truth is, I made those payments late in 2017. Maybe it is unfair to expect them to be removed. Maybe I need to put the time in as my penance and hope that the legislation that is being discussed that would reduce derogatory time to five years instead of seven comes to fruition soon. From what I understand, it would be an Act of God to get Cap 1 to respond positively to a GW request anyway. Maybe it's time to save on the postage.
