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Credit Report Wrong - Dispute also wrong...uh, what next?
mxmarks
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I'm kind of at a loss here. I had a weird thing where my bank accounts switched, and some autopay bills got caught in the crossfire. I paid a bill on 3/2 that bounced back, and then paid it correctly on 3/16.
I stupidly didn't adjust autopay at that time, and on 4/2, the same thing happened again. Only I didn't catch it until 4/22, and paid it that day.
The next month my credit score dropped like 30 points because they reported a late payment of 30-65 days. In my mind, my payment was late 20 days (due 4/2, paid 4/22).
I disputed it with Equifax and TransUnion, and both came back saying "no, that's correct". The strangest part is while TransUnion just goes "Ok we looked into it, everything is cool", Equifax gave evidence and shows I was late on payments in 2021 and 2022, but says I was on time in April, when the mark on my credit score is shown. I pulled my bank statements and credit card statements from those months and they show on time payments.
So I called the card and got immediately stonewalled. The guy said it looks good to him, but he cant help. And they DONT have a phone number or email for credit disputes. Only a snail mail address. So I sent a letter off to them, explaining I've never missed a payment, I still don't BELIEVE I've missed a payment, and included my bank statements.
As I sit here and wait though it's really hard to believe they're going to do anything other than just say "No, we were right." And they're not! And if they are, someone should be able to explain it to me so at least I can go "Oh shit, well thats stupid but whatever."
Is there any other recourse? I can't find anyone or any place who helps with this, or could at least help me look into this more. It's incredibly frustrating and calling the bank (...in the process of a balance transfer off this card so I never have to deal with TD Bank ever again) only gets me "Sorry, we only talk about credit disputes in writing via real mail". Especially when the guy on the phone was like "I dunno, looks good to me too."
I stupidly didn't adjust autopay at that time, and on 4/2, the same thing happened again. Only I didn't catch it until 4/22, and paid it that day.
The next month my credit score dropped like 30 points because they reported a late payment of 30-65 days. In my mind, my payment was late 20 days (due 4/2, paid 4/22).
I disputed it with Equifax and TransUnion, and both came back saying "no, that's correct". The strangest part is while TransUnion just goes "Ok we looked into it, everything is cool", Equifax gave evidence and shows I was late on payments in 2021 and 2022, but says I was on time in April, when the mark on my credit score is shown. I pulled my bank statements and credit card statements from those months and they show on time payments.
So I called the card and got immediately stonewalled. The guy said it looks good to him, but he cant help. And they DONT have a phone number or email for credit disputes. Only a snail mail address. So I sent a letter off to them, explaining I've never missed a payment, I still don't BELIEVE I've missed a payment, and included my bank statements.
As I sit here and wait though it's really hard to believe they're going to do anything other than just say "No, we were right." And they're not! And if they are, someone should be able to explain it to me so at least I can go "Oh shit, well thats stupid but whatever."
Is there any other recourse? I can't find anyone or any place who helps with this, or could at least help me look into this more. It's incredibly frustrating and calling the bank (...in the process of a balance transfer off this card so I never have to deal with TD Bank ever again) only gets me "Sorry, we only talk about credit disputes in writing via real mail". Especially when the guy on the phone was like "I dunno, looks good to me too."
PSN: mxmarks - WiiU: mxmarks - twitter: @ MikesPS4 - twitch.tv/mxmarks - "Yes, mxmarks is the King of Queens" - Unbreakable Vow
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Something similar happened to me at the end of my last lease. I returned the car but they thought I still owed them a month's payment. Something something bill a month behind. I paid them the money, the account was closed and the next month the strike fell off.
*Damages beyond them doing everything necessary to correct the error with all relevant agencies are likely to be nominal at best, however. In my case damages were $25 and no attorney's fees. The case was only worth pursuing because I was already suing for medical malpractice and a judgement that paid off all my bills gave me enough money for myself to get dinner at McDonalds.
Thanks for the advice, I'll do this.
I have disputed it twice with Credit Karma and both times get back "We investigated it and if there's anything wrong we'll change it." And then nothing happens. Which makes me skeptical it's being investigated, and I can't figure out WHAT they are seeing that would make this correct. That's the most frustrating part. If it's some dumb technicality that they have, at least explain to me how a bill due on the 2nd and paid on the 22nd is 30 days late, so I can go "well thats bullshit" and move on. Don't just keep telling me it's fine.
But I requested a new card (I havent used this card in 5 years. The credit card has been frozen for 4 of those. I used it once on a big purchase and cut it up), and the second that comes in I'm transferring the balance and closing shop with them.
Basically after that last post, I decided to really button up my finances. My credit score was over 800, I had a small bump in the road due to that banking error referenced above, and decided to just get everything in order.
I paid off the card in question in full, so it had a balance of $0, and sent a letter to them asking them to again explain how I was late. Figured I'd give it one last shot so I didn't have to close the account, and if they wouldn't budge, I'd close it. So frustrating, but whatever.
I then moved all other debt I had to the card with a 0% APR on balance transfers until Nov 2024. Figured this way no interest would be gathering while I paid things down.
I felt so fucking good. 3 credit cards with $0 balance. 99% (that should be 100%, but working on that) on-time payment rate. One card that has a high balance, but no interest and I'll have no problem paying it down before interest starts up. I felt like I finally did something right. My score took a hit from the issues above and was at 768, but it would bounce back.
Three days ago it dropped 35 more points.
And the part that triggers my anxiety so bad is there's no reason. I click "whats changed?" and it says "You paid down your balances! Thats great!" and thats it. Thats the only change. There's nothing else. Everywhere I look and everything I look into says I'm doing great, nothings changed except paying things down.
And there's just no one to talk to, no one to explain to me whats going on, and I feel totally powerless because every time I try to get myself in a better position it somehow tanks it.
When I ignored my credit score entirely it was the highest it's ever been, and when I started taking Credit Karma's advice it just started randomly dropping all the time without me doing anything but trying to consolidate my debt.
Just really fucking sucks, and I need to stop obsessively checking it but I can't because my dumb brain keeps saying "there HAS to be a reason - find it before it hurts you and your family more!" and I just can't.
In my panic I almost cancelled a family vacation we've been planning for months, despite having a decent amount in savings and the aforementioned cards with $0 balance because I was going "we just can't afford it. We can't afford anything until I know why this is happening."
I've calmed a bit since then but it still just is making me nuts.
As for missing a payment, you can reach out directly to the customer service of the company and ask for any leniency in reporting the late payment since you are always on time and 99% of the time they'll correct it. Keep in mind there's a lag time of a few months for these things to reflect too, sometimes.
You're doing everything right, sometimes these companies are just dumb. The number you see on creditkarma isn't even the number that banks see.
Had a personal rough patch and my wife got laid off in November last year, so it's been a big "step up and manage the family" year. All things considered I was/am pretty proud of how we've done. With very little hit to quality of life (no more cable or tv service, that kind of small stuff) we've been able to keep the house, both cars and savings has only taken a slight hit. Credit card debt went up, but is manageable and under control.
So to see an outside force just kind of come at me with "No - youre actually doing BADLY!" when I've been really focused on stepping up and doing well just kind of set me off.
Really appreciate the sincere responses that make me feel like I need to just stop looking at things and keep doing what I'm doing. Bills are being paid on time and we're alright, so I think it's time to turn off the alerts from Credit Karma until we're back on our feet and that kind of thing actually matters again.
frustratingly, you'll find that going directly to the credit bureaus costs you money and doesn't offer you anything
the score creditkarma AND all three services will show you is a flat-out lie (at my most charitable I would call this score a marginally useful approximation that you can't count on)
you're not allowed to see your actual score unless you try to use your credit, and you're not allowed to find out how any activity affects your actual score
No major bank will offer you any credit reporting remediation or repair no matter how often you ask them, or your status as a customer
Do stop looking though. Over time, miss no payments and avoid bad things being reported to your credit = positive. Keeping your debt to around or less than 20% of your available credit is a good idea. Using credit and paying it off is great. Ignoring it or letting it sit unused is neutral or bad. The rest of everything is pointless to worry about unless you need more credit, and at that point if you've been doing all this anyway for a while then you'll probably be fine.
- have some credit
- use it and pay it off
- stay under 20% usage
- don't fuck up and miss a bill or take on more debt than you can pay
- accept that you'll probably never convince anyone to remove a bad mark if you do fuck up, so
- definitely don't fuck up
- keep on truckin
Do this and you'll have a good enough score to handle problems or borrow if you need to.
It'll do wonders for your mental health to turn it off, absolutely. I had to as well, I was the same way after my bankruptcy, checking it near daily even though I know it doesn't shift much month to month let alone day to day.
Good job on keeping everything together, too, that's hard work and you both should be proud of handling that.
@spool32 basically sums it all up in his bullet points, if you follow those you'll be _golden_. One extra thing I'll add is try not to close lines of credit unless they cost you money, age of credit is important too.
Even though they pointlessly knocked your score down, you still have a very high score and it seems like tracking it to the level you are is just damaging your mental health. If you wanted to use your score for something like buying a house or a car, the institutions that make loans on those things don't even use the credit scores CreditKarma tracks. They use an entirely different set of scores that aren't nearly as volatile! (and yes you can track those if you really need to, but it costs money to do so; they aren't part of the "free yearly credit score" thing, either. I wouldn't advise tracking them unless you're planning on refinancing your mortgage or getting a new home loan in the next couple of years).
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
Their ideal customer isn't one that clears cards and just has them for emergencies it's someone who maintains some level of constant debt without getting into financial difficulty (and this someone who generates continual interest for the lender).
So your score is definitely not a score on your handling of your finances if that's giving you any stress.
The difference between a 'safe' score and the 'top' score is less about whether you would get a loan and more whether companies will offer you free/cheap credit out of the blue because they think you're the sort of person who would use it and probably can still keep on top of it.
It's for measuring how reliably lenders think they can make money off of you.
The clerk tells me he is not allowed to tell me why I was declined over the phone and that I have to wait for another snail mail letter that will explain why.
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zero debt after I paid off my car...and in only 2 years too. prior to that I was also debt free for many years. Talked to them last week and I still haven't gotten my snail mail letter stating why I didn't get approved. just got home and still nothing in my mail.
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I don't know when you paid off the car but I had a similar experience trying to get a card after paying off my student loans, apparently 6 months after you've paid off the debt it is cleared from your history so even though I made perfect payments on my loans, after 6 months I actually had a 0 credit score like I didn't even have a score. I couldn't even get a Target card
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A credit report isn't proof that you're trustworthy and will pay your debts. Credit companies do care about that, but they also care about whether you're the sort of person who will go into debt. Being debt free isn't what they want to see - they want to see a person who will borrow reasonably, not overextend themselves, and pay back on time.
You'd think that "I don't borrow at all" and "I'm a good debt risk" would align but credit companies generally do not think that. So what you want to do is at minimum get a card with a low balance and pay it off every month, while keeping yourself to under 20% of the max you could borrow. Over time, this will make you look like a good credit risk because you prove that you're the kind of person who will borrow money, not just the kind of person who avoids debt.
Note that without a revolving credit line that stays alive, things like personal loans or car loans will vanish from your credit 7 years after they're paid, and then you actually look like worse of a risk than you did when you were paying your bills on time.
tl;dr your credit report is a measure of:
1) how willing you are to assume debt
2) how good you are at paying the debt
If you don't regularly do #1, you don't end up keeping good credit.
re spool32, I'm debt free, but I still use credit cards. I did a similar deal with an Amazon credit card a number of years ago where I think they offered me a big Amazon Gift card if I applied and spent a certain amount. So yeah, I applied, (IIRC I was approved right away and didn't have to jump through the hoops I did here), got the card, used it to buy something I was aiming to buy anyway, paid it off immediately, got the gift card and going forward any time I buy anything on Amazon, I use the card and just pay it off immediately. There have been a handful of times I forgot to pay it off and was late, but apparently nothing recent enough as I didn't see any dings to my credit report. Ironically it's been a while since I used the amazon card simply because Amazon has been sucky lately and I've actively tried to find alternate ways of buying things i'd normally buy from Amazon.
Also ironically, right after I got off the phone with the Playstation card people, I got an email from one of my other credit cards that I haven't used since the pandemic started warning me that I need to use it soon or they might close me down. So yeah I may want to close down one or more of these old cards...we'll see.
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If you have a dozen old CCs, okay yeah it probably makes sense to trim down because now all of the available credit on those dozen cards makes you look risky in a different way - but having some cards with a long history is helpful if you want the option to get additional lines of credit in the future.