Collection acct deleted, Fico still dropped?

[Anonymous]

whooooo hoooo it just keeps getting better!!! Sent a fax to GreenTree servicing to update CORRECTLY an account I paid in 2005 so that it reflected correctly that the account wasn't and isn't delinquent.

What do I get for my efforts?  I get a score watch alert that my score changed and low and behold GreenTree doesn't change anything other than I am now "disputing" and my damn score goes DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 9 points!  I was 2 freakin' points from my REFI and for asking that a tradeline be reported correctly, I take ANOTHER hit.

I found out today that there is legislaton that is trying to get passed called the "Medical Debt Collection Relief Act" that says that once a medical collection is paid that it has to be removed from all CB's within 30 days.  But it's moving slow to say the least.

I've simply never seen anything to beat this twisted system.

Unbelievable.....

[Anonymous]

I have seen these same errors.  I have been trying to get a house now for almost a year.  At first I did not qualify, so my partner and I traded in our truck to get it off my credit report.  That worked and no issues.  Score went up.  Now, 10 months later, only one little ding and it kills me again.  I have lots of old paid off collections that do nothing much to me or for me.  But give me one 30 day late and you are screwed.  It makes no sense that many paid off collections have only 10% of the destructive power that 1 - 30day late has.

[Anonymous]

Ok here's ANOTHER update.

Because GreeTree Servicing initiated the investigation into the account I had 5 years ago with them, the score dropped 9 points.  Got notification today that EQ has completed the investigation and found no changes are needed. 

So I called EQ to ask about restoring the points.  Their response was that IF I got these points back it would take as much as 30 days to return.  30 DAYS????????????????????????????????????????????  It took ONE DAY to take it away and ONE WEEK to complete the investigation that determined that no changes need be made.  How unfair is that?

So I log into my EQ account to see that I had 2 more "Score Power" reports available, so I launched a new one.  Low and behold they are reporting my mortgage TWICE!!  So I call the dispute department and had to explain twice that it was  being reported EXACTLY THE SAME,  under the "Credit Summary".  The rep said that she assured me that in the "Credit File" that she was looking at, that it was only reported once.  So I countered that according to their own site that the info I was looking at was up to date, as I JUST requested it.  She said it would need to be handled by the "Customer Service" dept.   So I am transferred to them where they say it's a "DISPUTE DEPT" issue!! JEEEEEEZZZZZZZ

So I told them what the Dispute Dept said.  He FINALLY tells me that he is sending that info to ANOTHER dept that would uptate that information to report correctly that it was obvious they were reporting it twice as it was all EXACTLY the same.

I asked if it would have any bearing on my score and he said that he thought it would but it would take 7-10 days to update that!

So I ask you, why if the FIRST dispute is complete does it take up to 30 days to CORRECT something BACK to what it was to begin with.  Which by the way I was NOT insured that I would be restored those 9 lost points.  Only that they SHOULD be restored.  I should be given those points back within the same amount of time it took to take them away.  They have determined that no changes need to be made, so put them back!

Now, if EQ is showing my mortgage TWICE is that affecting my score?  Why does it take 7-10 days to correct it?

I realize that it takes some time to do some things,  but how much more could you possibly expect a consumer to deal wtih? 

Good Grief!

And who knows why the TransUnion score went up?

[twosense]

 I wish that I had an answer, but I don't.  I just wanted to say that I empathize with you.  Keep us posted. 

[Anonymous]

that does suck. it amazes me in the time of technology it could take so long to update an account. That is just like when you pay a merchant for merchandise, it deducts the amt right then from your credit/debit card, however,  if you seek a refund it could take 7 - 10 days to refund to your account. WHAT GIVES?  I hate equifax..there toll free number is useless. All they give you are answers allready posted on there web, you can tell there reading scripts. It amazes me there call center is outsourced to "India".. To me, that in itself should be a mater of national security. I mean, do you REALY want someone in another country having access to your personal information? To them, you are someone in another country, they could care a less about your credit. THE WHOLE process of disputing something is bogus. It's one thing when you are not sure of the process or the way things work. but when you KNOW FOR A FACT that something is wrong, you have PROOF that something is wrong, and equifax still claims its being "reported correctly and has been verified"? ( give me a break )... i swear to god, you would think with the amount of complaints consumers have on credit reporting, violations, how unfair the Ficco calculations are etc etc, the government would have done something by now, WHY they are lagging behind is beyond me.

As i stated earlier: all the blogs and post's out there, even on the ftc.gov website in reference to "violations" etc, they make it seem so simple to dispute something or file a complaint, does it realy work? NOPE is it realy as easy as they say to sue for violations? NOT EVEN..

what can you do? bend over and take it i guess. The ball is in the court, the government is on there side!

[twosense]

Ok, my score finally went back up to just above 600.  Only 18 points away from getting a line of credit from my credit union to pay off old debts.

I had a student loan issue fixed.  Long story.

The collection item that I paid never showed up on my Equifax in the first place so I can't measure the affect.

I also paid down a secured credit card to reduce my "debt ratio".

Climbing up the hill to 620! 

[Anonymous]

BRB!  Whew you and I must be dealing with some of the same people!!!!  Still waiting on Hospital to update with CB's on three different accounts.  They still havnen't notified one CA they use, the others that they were reporting still haven't updated.  However I will say that the ladies in that office at the hospital have been great and diligent in trying to help.  I may call tomorrow just to follow up.  It's been almost a month since I paid all that stuff and they agreed to delete on dup.

So where are you standing with things now?  I'm not sure if I have any advice but would be glad to help.  Heaven knows I've had a CRASH COURSE lately! 

Here's an update on me.  Yeah I know....long winded, I know no other way!

Ok yet ANOTHER update.

I hope all are making way in a positive direction on their own credit fronts.  Here's my current status.

Virtually all CA's I have paid have made their way through the system and updated, EXCEPT  EQ.  So here goes.

Pulled info first via Experian and obtained my score directly from them.  Score at EXP as of May 8 was 639 then a collection hit and dropped to 582 on May 25.  Then on July 31 up to 601....so I'm thinking Ok we're getting there.  Then today I decided to update that info at Experian and found that the score is up to 658!!!!!! Whooo Hooo!!

So I decided to check TU.  I first went to Credit Karma and updated there and the score at TU was showing that my score was 624 which is up from the 617 my lender was reporting earlier in the month.  However, I went straight to the TU website and pulled it there and the score is 756!  Wow!  Could this be real?

Now the one that is seriously puzzling me is EQ.  I was at 618 and got an alert that GreenTree Servicing had opened an "insvestigation" on an account from several years back.  I DID NOT initiate the investigation, they did.  At any rate the score dipped to 609.   I was told by EQ that the dip in score was related to the investigation and that once that investigation was complete the points "may" be restored.  I've recieved notice from GreenTree that the investigation was complete on their end, over a week ago.  But no restoration of points. 

Spent about half an hour with EQ on the phone today where they corrected my morgage being reported twice, and then changed 2 accounts from installment to revolving which I needed.  So everything looks pretty straight on there.

There are three CA's that haven't updated to "paid" on the EQ and one from RJM Acquisitions hasn't deleted yet has they promised.

So I'm making some progress.  But I am confused as to why the other two, TU and EXP went up pretty considerably but this one at EQ hasn't moved.  I pulled the score directly from EQ today to be sure and it hasn't wnet up while the others have. 

I will say this, today the cust serv rep at EQ upped my account to include all kinds of things like the ID stuff and credit freeze thing etc.  Unlimited access to my CR etc.

I jut don't get why the EQ score isn't moving but these other two do?

Here's my next concern;  I have a duplicate collection with the local Hospital that they are going to request deletion because obviously it is duplicated.  The actual collection has been paid and will updated accordingly.  If the the duplicate comes off, shouldn't my score go up a bit?  Several here have said that their scores have went down when the collection dropped off.

The RJM account should delete soon. 

If these two drop off, logic would say the score should rise but I'm concerned it will take dip.  What do you buys think?

I've been waiting since July 11th when my lender pulled my TRI MERGE report that showed scores of 599  (EXP) 617 (TU) and 628 (EQ).  My scores are now as stated above:  658 (EXP) Up a total of 76 points in only 1 month!!  758 (TU) up 141 points in the same period of time!  Then 609 (EQ)  DOWN 9 points.

Lender says I need my "middle score" to be 620.  DIdn't say which ones needed to be 620 or higher, just that the middle one needed to be.  So I'm sitting on 609, 658 and 758.  So do you guys think I should get up with the lender now?  Concerned that if these other two drop off the EQ for example the scores will get worse.

Thoughts? 

This has been hands down the most insane process I've ever been involved in.  Period!

[Anonymous]

 Ok here's another twisted change to my situation.  I hope all that are keeping up here are having better luck overall.

Got a msg the other day that the score at EQ had went to 622, yeah!  I'm thinking.  Finally I start heading back to where I was in the 640's.  The increase was due to my calling EQ and telling them the there were two "disputed" accounts on my report that I didn't dispute.  I never had, the OC had initiated the dispute at somepoint when I had spoken with them.  One is a long since paid and closed account and the other is recently paid collection.

So the status changed on the long since paid account to say "Under reinvestigation".  So the score went from 609 to 622 due to this change.

So this is where I'm thinking well, my lender needed my "middle" score at 620 or above.  So I have at this point, 622, 658 and 756....So I call the lender and say let's strike while things look good.  He pulls and it wasn't good news. 

EQ was dead on what I could pull but EXP was not only not up with what I got but was down since the last time for some reason and TU hadn't changed at all.  So I call EXP and they say that is because when mortgage lenders pull the scores are based on the "FICO" model and takes into account factors that the individual  bureaus do not. 

ON TU and EX the deletion of an agreed account via "PFD" was the reason for the increase at each respective bureau, however whent the "FICO" model was applied to those, the deletion clearly didn't benefit me.  Only on their model of calculation.

So there you go.  Get my hopes up thinking I've passed a threshold and find that not only did the scores that I saw change, didn't , one dropped. 

Now I've taken a hit for a "hard pull" again on my file. 

Lender wants to talk to the bureaus and my bank about my to LOC accounts reporting as "installment" rather than "revolving" and feels that if we can get that change made it will be a big help.

Any thoughts?

I have one.  Twisted.  Oh here's another one.  UNFAIR.  Unfair that we can't get the exact same info that the lenders get.  Period.

[Anonymous]

I'm sure this hasnt' escaped you, mw, but I feel compelled to point out that you're comparing apples to oranges in this sentence:

"I've been waiting since July 11th when my lender pulled my TRI MERGE report that showed scores of 599  (EXP) 617 (TU) and 628 (EQ).  My scores are now as stated above:  658 (EXP) Up a total of 76 points in only 1 month!!  758 (TU) up 141 points in the same period of time!  Then 609 (EQ)  DOWN 9 points."

Your lender likely used FICO scores, whereas you're looking at FAKO scores which are not used by any lenders, which use completely different scoring algorithms from FICO and one another, and which are only provided for "educational" and entertainment purposes by the CRAs and/or monitoring programs (except ScoreWatch scores, which are FICO scores for EQ).

Sorry if this has already been addressed or if it is already something you were aware of. (I'm new here, but not altogether new ) - hope that helps somewhat, and good luck with all this! Lesson be learned - paying off a collection resets the Date of Last Activity, which is what the 7-year reporting period is based off of. Ridiculous but whaddyagonnado?

edit - sorry, just saw this quote of yours which shows that you've realized what I posted above, sorry! -

"So this is where I'm thinking well, my lender needed my "middle" score at 620 or above.  So I have at this point, 622, 658 and 756....So I call the lender and say let's strike while things look good.  He pulls and it wasn't good news. 

EQ was dead on what I could pull but EXP was not only not up with what I got but was down since the last time for some reason and TU hadn't changed at all.  So I call EXP and they say that is because when mortgage lenders pull the scores are based on the "FICO" model and takes into account factors that the individual  bureaus do not."

[GregB]

It seems that this thread is directed toward the FICO scoring system being unfair. I have mostly found that to be false. There are many problems with our credit system but the FICO scoring system seems to be getting blamed for being the problem when it is usually just the reporting that people see. Due to divorce and the erroneous items that have appeared on my report, I have been carefully monitoring my credit for 6+ years and have pulled 1000+ reports during that time. I am now down to around 20 reports or change reports a month.  These include info from 4 different entities reporting a combination of FICO and FAKO scores. Since my business was dependent on my good FICO score, I ended up being force to learn much more about this than I ever wanted to know. I have had about a dozen erroneous collections appear on my reports, most in the last 6 years.

1. The biggest problem that I have found is how easily a collection agency can trash your credit by reporting a collection on an account that does not belong to you. This seems to be the original problem reported in the original post. Five of mine have involved city, state and federal government and then a collection agency attempting to collect. That is double ugly. I think this system might be fixed easily by requiring any collection agency to send a registered letter to the person's address on file with the CRAs before adding a collection item to the credit report. That still might not have fixed one where my ex-wife wrote "not at this address" on a final water bill.

2. The OP was that an erroneous collection dropped their score 40 points and then when it was deleted there was a further drop of 7 points. With all due respect, I find that almost impossible to believe based upon my numerous experiences with this. I think it must be marked as paid, not deleted from the report. Between my own reports and the experience of helping several others, I am quite sure that an identical report generates an identical score. It is hard to show where each deleted collection gets you back to the same exact score since other items usually change. I do have actual reports that are very, very similar except for the deleted collection and the score returned to a VERY similar score. In the last year, I had one erroneous collection come back 3 times. Each time I had it removed within days so my reports were very similar. I have hundreds of saved reports along with spreadsheets of the changes and score changes.

3. The OP stated that they thought the system of paying off a collection resulted in a temporary lowering of your FICO score. I have no experience with this since I have never had a legitimate collection added to my report which then became paid. If that is the way the system works, I would agree with them. A person should not be penalized for paying their debts.

4. Many posts complain that it should be easy or quick to "fix" your credit. That is just life. It is always easier to make a mistake than to fix it. Plant a new tree, water it regularly, and then forget for too long. What is the result?