Following is the letter that I used to conduct an investigation of three items on my credit report that were listed as in collections from a collection agency so I really had no idea what the items were for, and apparently the collection agency did not either so they removed all three items resulting in an increase of 30 points in my score:

To Whom It May Concern:

I have been recently informed that there is inaccurate information in the credit file that Trans Union maintains under my social security number. Upon ordering my credit report, I see the following information that I am requesting an investigation on:

Genesis Financial for $50 – This is not my account.
Genesis Financial for $165 – This is not my account.
EAF LLC for $119 – This is not my account.
AR Concepts for $75 – This is not my account.

Please validate this information and provide me with any appropriate documentation associated with what is being reported bearing my signature. In the absence of any such documentation, I ask that this information be deleted from the file that you maintain under my social security number.

For your convenience, I have enclosed a copy of my identification.

Best regards,

Perseverance certainly pays off – I still have more work to do, but in 6 months, my Trans Union score has increased by 100 points just from writing letters, making calls and paying a few small things off.

Credit scores are hard to watch, because for 2 years, I had very little improvements even though I was working on and off on fixing my credit. I think what affected this improvement was a credit card that I had now for 2 years that I have never been late on … that could be it, but then again, who knows – credit scores are like a foreign language that only twins speak to each other in, so I just have to be happy with my improvement! (…and I am!)

Here is a copy of the last letter I sent to AFNI that led to the final response of deleting everything:

Your response to my two previous requests for information on the debt you are reporting to my credit reports came much later than the 30 days that is allotted by federal law. In addition, your response did not contain any information in regards to the information you are reporting, but rather was an expedition for personal information from me. In addition, you reported the debt as being valid to the credit bureaus once again, AFTER I requested validation of the debt. How did you validate the debt with the credit bureaus while disregarding my requests?

I do not even know who you are, or what the debt is in relation to. I provided you with the account number you are reporting on my credit report. I will not send you a copy of my social security card or my identification or my utility bills – you must provide me with some information to validate the debt you are reporting with the account number, otherwise you are in violation of my rights under the FDRPA and FCRA.

If the information is not available or the debt can not be validated, please remove the listing from my credit report. As of now, I do not even know who the debt was originally with. I am requesting you for information – I am not making any statements, elections or offering a waiver of any of my rights. Your failure to respond within 30 days will result in legal action under my federally protected rights.

I also got a letter from a law firm in Chicago that filed a class action lawsuit against them – I mailed them a letter back, five days after their deadline, saying I was not sure about participating in the class action, but here are copies of my correspondence with Afni for your reference. I guess they say you can get like a $20 gift card as a reward from the class action – we’ll see!

This letter is in response to your investigation with Credit Union in regards to the derogatory information you are reporting on the consumer file you maintain under the above consumer ID.

Your investigation verified that I have an unpaid debt with Credit Union, when my records indicate that I do not owe Credit Union any money.  The documents you produced to serve as evidence of unpaid monies owed to Credit Union was a copy of a membership application.  This does not serve as viable evidence of any amounts owed to Credit Union.

Be aware that I am making a final goodwill attempt to have you clear up this matter. The listed item is entirely inaccurate and incomplete, and represents a very serious error in your reporting.

Failure to comply with federal regulations by credit reporting agencies are investigated by the Federal Trade Commission (see 15 USC 41, et seq.). I am maintaining a careful record of my communications with you for the purpose of filing a complaint with the FTC and the Attorney General’s office, should you continue in your non-compliance. I further remind you that, as in Wenger v. Trans Union Corp., No. 95-6445 (C.D.Cal. Nov. 14, 1995), you may be liable for your willful non-compliance.  An incomplete investigation with continued reporting errors in my consumer file will result in my legal action for your violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act

They actually did not respond back, not even with that letter that says they have my letter and are looking into it. However, I also sent the following letter to the credit union:

This letter is regarding account #000, 000 and 000, all of which have been reported to ChexSystems. This is a formal notice that the ChexSystems claims and amounts reportedly owed are disputed. This is my second letter to you in attempt to retrieve this information.

I have requested validation of the claims you have made to ChexSystems for all three accounts, including associated documents bearing my signature detailing my contractual obligations with you, as I am entitled by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act to receive within 30 days. In addition, please send me the following:

· What the money you say I owe is for;
· Explain and show me how you calculated what you say I owe;

This letter is an attempt to correct your records, and any information received from you will be used for that purpose should any further action be necessary. This is a request for information only, and is not a statement, election, or waiver of status.

My contact information is as follows:

So the Credit Union responded back and in that letter, they referenced my letter to ChexSystems, so I guess ChexSystems got my letter and is acting on it – they just didn’t communicate that to me.

Anyway, the credit union responded back to me and they sent me a copy of a bank statement that had over $1500 of bank fees because Paypal had a few charges that were all under $10 (some under $1) that they kept submitting over and over and over again. They also sent me a copy of my membership application again which said I agreed to pay all those bank fees. Their letter closed by saying they will accept money orders and cashiers checks for payment. Oh, and also, they said that they sent me this information before (the bank statements) as well as to ChexSystems and that this was their third time responding – they did not send me bank statements, they sent me membership applications. Anyway, they have violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act on many levels, so I sent them the following letter:

Thank you for your response to my letter. I received your response dated January 15, 2010. The information that you provided twice in 2008 was not the same information that you provided to me today. In 2008, I disputed the fact that I owed Credit Union any money, and you sent copies of my membership form to validate the debt that you were reporting. Obviously a membership form does not validate a debt.

However now I am in receipt of the bank statements that show the amounts that you are reporting that I have been disputing for nearly two years. Thank you for finally sending them. In reviewing the statements for account number 000, I see that the same electronic debits were submitted to my account over and over again and each time that debit hit my account, you charged me $25. It is the bank fees that caused me to go into debt with your bank where in the month of October 2008 alone, you charged me $1125 in fees. In November, right before you automatically closed the account, you charged me $350 in bank fees totaling $1475 in fees alone.

After taking funds out of my other bank accounts, you are reporting that I owe you $1296.68. Considering the substantial delay in responding to my validation request, as well as your general failure to comply to FCRA guidelines in reporting and responding to my validation requests, I am interested in seeing if you would be willing to work out a settlement for this debt. Please advise at your earliest convenience if this is an option. I would be willing to agree not to file any claims in regards to FCRA violations within our settlement agreement in exchange for you removing all 3 listings from my ChexSystems consumer reporting file.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to your response. My contact information is as follows:

Now I do not expect a favorable response – I really think that the woman who sent me the letter will laugh at me. Whatever. I am prepared to pursue their violations by filing suit in excess of what they owe me, so we will see what happens …

I’ll keep posted on what happens …

In addition, organize all your paperwork – you need to save copies of EVERYTHING – from copies of bills, letters you send, letters you receive, postage receipts, and receipts from certified and registered mail.  Following is how I organize my paperwork, and it seems to work really well in keeping things easy to track, easy to retrieve and easy to reference.

First of all, I would recommend getting the following – many of these can be retrieved from eBay for very cheap or Craigslist for free – or you may have these items laying around the house, or if you work in an office, your boss may let you take a few things as a personal favor – TRY NOT TO SPEND A LOT OF MONEY – the other part of credit repair is credit management!

• A file box that can hold hanging file folders
• Hanging file folders in 3 different colors (though one of the colors you will only need 3-5 folders)
• 5160 Avery Mailing Labels – I got a box of 100 sheets
• 5167 Avery Return Labels – I got a pack of 10 sheets on eBay
• 2 pocket folders (or just file folders will be fine too)
• Roll of transparent tape
• Stack of certified and registered mail receipts from the post office (so your mail is ready to go!)

As you can see from my picture, I have burgundy hanging folders in the front – this is for the credit reporting agencies, the green folders are for original creditors and the red folders are for collection agencies.  In each folder, I have copies of bills and letters in order chronologically with the oldest in the back and newest in the front.   Also, for the companies I have a lot of mail going back and forth to, I print a whole sheet of labels in Word and put that at the back of the file so I do not have to keep printing mailing labels for each letter – you use three labels for every certified letter, so it is handy to have them pre-printed.

Also, I organize my letters as follows:

Notice that the certified and return registered mail receipt are stapled to the letter.  In addition, I staple a copy of the postage receipt to the back of the letter.

When I send mail out, I get copies of my receipt – as many as I had letters that went out – that way, when I need to add up my postage costs for any particular debt, the receipts are all there and easily accessible – once you have the system set up, it is very easy to maintain.

In the picture above,  you may notice the green and black file folders in the front of the box.  The green folder contains letters that just came in the mail that I have to file or receipts from the post office that also need to be filed.  I also stick my most recent True Credit 3 in 1 printout in that folder which I routinely reference and make notes on as to what I want to do next.  The black folder has my return labels pre-printed with my return address, copies of my ID ready to send out if need be and papers I pulled out of the file that I need to make photocopies of for whatever reason.  In the back of the box, I store the tape (which I have to use over my labels because I got the super cheap ones and they peel really easily) and my stack of unused post office certified and registered mail forms.

It took me a while to get to this point, and even to figure out the best way to get organized, but I tell you, this system sure beats huge piles of mail in 5 different boxes randomly in different parts of the house.  People who are in debt get more mail than those that are not in debt – we need some kind of system to organize all the mail!

The lady came on the phone talking the same talk as the lady the day before yesterday and I asked her if she had notes in her computer about the 10+ minute conversation I just had with the other lady who called … She did not so I summarized and asked them again to please stop calling my cell phone with their computer … I did tape our conversation – take a listen and let me know what you think – Again, I edited out my personal information so when you hear silence that is because the lady is talking about my personal data, so just keep letting it play and it will click back in …

My Conversation in MP3 Format

So now this lady said she will note my account and they will stop calling my cell phone … I will believe it when I see it … please stop eating up all my valuable minutes, Accounts Receivable Management!

In 2008, aggressive collection began – I kept getting nasty calls at work, I would often tell the collector that I am at work and can’t talk right now and they would ask where they can call me to talk – I did not have a home phone at that time because I was previously homeless and was just getting on my feet in a new apartment and just did not have a phone yet. I often had to put the call on hold to take other work-related calls and sometimes my boss would come to my desk and I would just hang up on them – they NEVER stopped calling. When I was out of the office at meetings, my voice mail would be full (not all them were the student loan people, but I had a lot of messages from them) so then with my voice mail full, all callers that wanted to leave messages for me had to do so with the receptionist – she would have a stack of messages for me, often times their messages were in the stack. They would complain to the receptionist that I am not returning their call and it would say on the message that they said that – my boss would see these messages and ask me about them and I assured him all the time that it was not a client, but rather student loan collectors – he told me to just tell them I am not allowed to accept personal calls – I did, but they still kept calling. I was warned consistently for bad performance on the job because of violating company policy and the top policy I violated was not returning calls within 24 hours as our company handbook states. I generally got emails all the time about my voice mail being full.

They also tried to garnish my wages and always threatened to do so – I already had a federal garnishment ordered by a federal judge who said nothing will ever trump that garnishment so when the student loan collectors threatened me with garnishment, I was pretty bold with them (I was actually bold with any collector that threatened garnishment). They would always say they can trump whoever is garnishing me, and I would be like probably not. Anyway, they still tried and the CFO of the company I worked for told them I am already being garnished by the US govt.

My tax refunds are applied to the huge amount of interest that accrues on my defaulted student loans and at this point, with the penalties and interest, I don’t see how I can ever pay these things off.

I was recently fired from my job for consistently not complying to company policy and these calls were a big contributor to that … since getting fired, I have had my lights turned off and battled with the utility company, I have been evicted, oh, I was pregnant when I got fired, I have a special needs baby – and this is all 2009. I was advised to speak to an attorney about the student loan collectors – I did that today … let’s hope 2010 looks a bit brighter!

Well, it was Accounts Receivable Management – one of the companies I just inquired and sent a certified letter about their permissible purpose today!  I guess our universes are colliding … I did tape our conversation – take a listen and let me know what you think – the entire conversation is about 10 minutes long and I edited out my personal information so when you hear silence that is because the lady is talking about my personal data, so just keep letting it play and it will click back in …

My Conversation in MP3 Format

They told me that they can not stop calling me – how crazy is that – they are eating up all my valuable minutes – how am I supposed to pay my bills when they are increasing my expenses?  Crazy how it all works …

As per my Trans Union credit report, Credit Protection Association obtained my credit file on July 21, 2008.  I have attempted to inform Trans Union that this inquiry was not authorized as I never gave Credit Protection Association permission to view my credit report, and they advised me that there is no dispute process to remove this inaccuracy in my credit report and that only Credit Protection Association can remove the inquiry.

I don’t recall applying for credit or employment with Credit Protection Association, and I do not even have a general idea who you are.  Your business name is no where else on my credit report and therefore I find it overall disturbing that your business practices involve randomly pulling credit reports.  It is illegal and unethical to violate my rights by pulling my credit report for no reason.  My credit report contains sensitive information that is private and protected from unauthorized review.  As you know, a hard inquiry on my credit affects my score.  Why did you pull my credit?  Did you verify my identity before pulling my credit report?

Please provide me with copies bearing my signature and any documentation regarding your purpose so that I can evaluate whether my identity was compromised and my further actions can be determined.

It is not fair for banks, credit unions or businesses in general to prey upon individuals and damage their credit without any reason.  Your actions have contributed to me being denied credit and a place to live and I am very upset about your actions.  I hope you will provide me with some peace of mind by offering me a copy of a loan application or other document bearing my signature making your inquiry permissible.

I sent 4 of these out – I will revisit these 5 issues at the start of next month – all letters were sent certified registered return receipt … it was about $5 per letter … this may cause some creditors to start contacting me that I may have been dormant with, but that is ok – I am prepared to deal with that and I am also prepared to make some small payments toward my debt in an effort to clean up the train wreck my credit is in!  Following are the companies I sent letters to that pulled my credit without my authorization (as far as I know): a local credit union, Accounts Receivable Management, Credit Protection Association and Integrity Financial Partners.  Tomorrow, I will start my phone calls!!