Hi folks,
I want to say thanks for all of the help and encouragement that has been provided. I'm well on my way to getting rid of a ton of my old medical gunk. During my own cleanup process, I've seen a lot of threads and posts regarding handwriting or colored stationery, etc. I thought I'd save people some grief over getting it "just right."
I've been designing the specific types of mail processing systems used by the Credit Bureaus and other high volume scanning applications. (My largest project recently was completion of a system designed to scan and track every tax return filed in a gulf coast state. It's processing about $9 Billion in transactions per year.)
I understand the desire to have an actual human read your letter. I can also tell you that I am also leery of my financial information being decided by someone making $15 an hour.
I would say that since a physical letter, certified, return receipt, etc. is much more labor intensive than an online filing. It also gives you the opportunity to frame the questions or arguments in your terms, rather than being forced into using a form designed for the convenience of the CRA.
That said, I can tell you emphatically that a colored background or off-color ink will have absolutely no effect on a scanner's ability to process a letter. These systems are designed to automate unstructured data that can be in any form or condition. There's not much that can be tried that hasn't already been accounted for. Handwriting will not stop it from being scanned, but it may stop it from being read properly. (Yes, there are many scanners that have a color dropout feature. That's useful for certain types of preprinted forms in order to have the lines and boxes fall away. That would not be used in this kind of system.)
When an item is scanned, the first thing that happens is the document is converted to either a color or grayscale image--typically a Group III or Group IV TIF image. These images are pretty large and impractical for storage, especially in any quantity. So to make them smaller, image processing software (or hardware in some cases) will strip out the background. It will then take the remaining data (text) and convert it to black. The idea is to create a black and white (bitonal) image.
A color image of an 8 1/2 X 11 inch piece of paper might come in at 2.5 MB. A grayscale image will be about 512K. A bitonal TIF image will be between 30K and 60K, give or take. The point to all of this is that they can then route a document electronically, even between cities or even continents (scary, huh?). This is much more efficient than moving paper around. It is also much less error prone. When you're dealing with paper that arrives by the tractor trailer, it's way too easy to loose a piece here or there, or get things out of order.
I know it goes against instinct, but in this instance it's better to trust the electronic process than a manual paper one. Someone working in mail opening will make minimum wage. Someone scanning will do better, but keep in mind that these documents are flying through so quickly, they're working hard just keeping the beast fed. Some of these high volume production scanners can do 400 8 1/2 X 11 inch pages, duplex, per minute. It's almost like a paper machine gun. That's 800 full images processed in a minute!
It's not until after a document has been scanned that you get to the more skilled workers. In Data Capture / Data Validation, people will verify what data could be automatically extracted. When a document can't be read electronically, you're trusting that a $15 an hour worker will enter the information accurately. That's being very trusting.
I'm all for holding feet to the fire, expecting to be treated fairly, and forcing creditors to work within the confines of the law. I am also fairly certain that sending in a letter that is written in an obvious attempt to get around their system will not be treated as fairly as a regular letter. There's a person at the other end of the letter. You want them to be your ally, not your enemy.
Credit Bureau employees are not evil or malicious, but they are indifferent. They work in a bureaucracy. and have two motivations: 1) Don't get yelled at by the boss. 2) Don't do something that would cause too much work.
I would submit that a firm, but polite letter that contains well-documented support and reasonable arguments (at least at first) will be more effective than legal-sounding threats.
