I tried to post the full length detail of my SM fiasco but it's several thousand characters long. In a nutshell, I discovered this on 5/8. Per a supervisor I have had three calls with: Yvonne said that SM, as of 4/1, was placing these comments on the credit reports of their consumers enrolled in lower-option repayment plans. She said it came from SM’s credit bureau team. I asked her why this was happening now? She said they were required to do so by law. I asked her which law? She replied the FCRA. She informed me that after my phone call, several of her servicing clerks had received calls similar to my complaint, and after inquiring with SM’s credit bureau team, she had to send an email to her servicing clerks informing them that “customers enrolled in lower-option repayment plans would be reported to the credit bureaus as having entered in partial repayment agreements with SM, and their scores would lower 50-100 pts. She started to tell me that SM “had done wrong all along and should have been reporting this” but stopped short of fully explaining and clarifying what she meant by that. She had just learned about this herself. Do you think they violated of the FCRA which says “In general. If any financial institution that extends credit and regularly and in the ordinary course of business furnishes information to a consumer reporting agency described in section 603(p) furnishes negative information to such an agency regarding credit extended to a customer, the financial institution shall provide a notice of such furnishing of negative information, in writing, to the customer. In general. The notice required under subparagraph (A) shall be provided to the customer prior to, or no later than 30 days after, furnishing the negative information to a consumer reporting agency described in section 603(p).” Since this policy went into affect as of 4/1, and many just found out about? I have a log of all my calls and everyone I spoke with.
