回复:collection agency寄来的讨债信 and credit reports
(2009-04-28 19:49:15)
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Question:
>之前收到一家collection agency寄来的讨债信。说我欠某>一信用卡官司200美金。可是我问他们要详细资料,比如什么时间花的钱,在哪里花的,对方通通不给,就说我欠债了要还债。打到信用卡公司去问,他们说资料已经转给讨债公司了,他们也没有。这不就成了无头公案了吗?
>对方报告credit bureau, 我如果dispute的话,credit >bureau会把坏记录去掉吗?
Answer:
Before I asnwer it, I could like to ask a quesition: Do you have this credit card oer have any record from the credit card company that you owe the $200?
Usually, for credit card company, the process of collection is like this:
1. when you missed 1 payment, in the next statement, they charge you a late fee and in their report to credit bureau, they report 30 days delinquency. This will NOT have negative impact on your credit history.
2. when you missed the second payment, they will continue to charge you late fee and report 60 days delinquency. this will have a negative impact on your credit score.
3. when you missed the 3rd payment, usually this is called 90-day delinquency. credit card company call this loan an official delinquent loan. In your credit report, you will have a 90 day delinquent mark. You credit score can drop as much as 50-100. Usually, credit card company will start collectio internally. i.e. it is the credit card company's employees who call you to collect.
4. usually after you missed 5 or 6 payment (i.e. almost 5-6 months later), your credit card account will be closed and the loan will be treated as bad loan. Usually, this kind of loan will be sold to outside collection agencies (usually at a deep discount like 10-20 cents for each dollar loans). By this time, the credit card company should not have any relationship with this loan and the owner of the debt will be the collection company.
Based on above. it will take about 4-6 months to go this far. If you really owe this amount of money, you should have get at least 4-6 statement, and a few collection phone call from the credit card company already.
So the fact is:
1. if really have this credit card and missed payment for a few months, the damage in your credit report is already there and I guess your credit score should below 700 or 650 by now.
2. If you don't have this credit card, it can be either an ID theft
3. or a mis-match name address search from the collector.
Here is you can do:
1. Do you have a credit card with this company? If not, it can be either
a. ID theft (someone used your identity to applied a card and spent money). Based on my experience, if the outstanding balance is only $200, it won't be ID theft. You know, typical ID theft usually with thousand of dollar amount, some of them even by cars and houses with other people's name.
b. or a mis-match of name. To our Chinese, this happened a lot here in US. Chinese have a lot of duplicate name and have no middle name. So it is every earch for company to send letter to wrong person. If you have a common Chinese name and another person owe credit card balance and dissappeared. Collection agents will search through address database and mistakenly send the collection letter to you.
2. If you do have a credit card with this company, get all of the past credit card statement from that credit card company, find out what the balance you owe. How many payment you missed.
3. I strongly recommend you to pull your credit report. You need to pull credit report from 3 major credit bureau: transunion, equifax, experian. You can do it from www.freecreditreport.com. By law, you can pull credit report for free once a year. Usually, they want to you to sign up some service and the first 3 months will be free. You can always sign up and cancel it in the 2nd month.
From you credit report, you need to find out is there any credit card account you don't own but show up in your file. If so, it is a identity theft and you need to report it to FTC http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/idtheft.htm
4. If you don't find that credit card account that they try to collect from you credit report, usually they send the letter to the wrong person. Explain it to them. Also there should be no impact on your credit score.
Dealing with credit bureau and credit score can be a headache. Good luck.