House For Cindy Please

Hi Paul!  We love your site so much & refer everyone we know.  Thank you for providing a place where people can go to get advice & help.  I’ve studied your help center & listened to your seminar several times, but still have a few questions.  If I missed something, I apologize — but I need your expert advice. 

We are trying to repair our credit.  We started 12/08, pulling our free credit report to start the process of trying to pre-qualify for a home loan.  At that time, (before we discovered brokencredit.com) my husbands scores were 599, 543, 506.  There were a lot of red flags & discrepancies that needed our attention.  We tackled the first things that stood out the most.  There were 2 tax liens that were not supposed to be there and an item that was supposed to be included in a bankruptcy that was discharged back in 2001.  We were able to get all three items removed.  We were excited, thinking that our scores would go up where they needed to be (we assumed that 2 tax liens would weigh heavily…).  We didn’t do a rapid re-score but the trade lines were removed.  There were about 3 new inquiries added when our credit report was pulled (we only authorized our mortgage agent to pull our reports).  It looks like they were all in mortgage industry.  In May we had our mortgage agent request our reports again to see if we were where we needed to be yet, hoping that our scores would go up.  Instead, our scores went down quite a bit.  Down to 587, 538, 515. 

There were about 3 new inquiries added again like before.  So we had a total of 5 inquires on 2 reports and 8 on the other.  We then discovered your site & did the “opt out” thing as suggested on your seminar.  We are still working on our report.  We disputed a few items and are in the process of building our case to have them removed.  As suggested on your seminar, we signed up on Truecredit.com to try and bump some of those inquiries.  It has been helpful to watch the reports and we finally got the 8 inquires bumped to 5 like the others.  On TrueCredit.com this week we got 4 alerts, saying that we have 3 new accounts & 1 new inquiry.  Are 2 of the NEW accounts duplicates & in addition to the previous account listed on our report?  It is an account that we are disputing w/Palisades. The new alerts said,  “Palisades, date opened 3/01/05 reported on 4/8/09, & Palisades, date opened 3/01/05 reported on 4/15/09. – both w/the same account number.  — The inquiry is with N.A.F.S. Buffalo. 

I thought that if we opted out, we wouldn’t get anymore unrequested inquiries.  Is the opt out a one time thing or a multiple thing?  My husband’s scores are now 522, 513, 517.  We just had a medical tradeline removed this month that wasn’t supposed to be there.  I thought that our scores would go up from that.  Again, they keep going down.  I feel like giving up.  Since Dec. his scores have gone down 86 pts. w/Experian, 21 w/Transunion, & only up 11 pts w/Equifax.  Is this normal? 

Is there something we are missing?  I am getting really discouraged and feel like giving up.  We were so excited about getting items removed, thinking that it would help our score but it seems like we’re stirring up a hornets nest.  I am desperate for your advice.

Please, please please help us!!  I don’t know where else to turn.

Thank you,

Cindy

———-

Hi Cindy,

The opt-out under the FACTA prevents the credit bureaus from selling your reports to companies that would like to send prescreened credit offers.  It does not prohibit a collection agency from running your report, but the collection agency must be collecting on an account that was generated from a creditor who ran your credit initially.  See Pondering Pintos.

Palisades updated the reporting date as a result of the dispute and it lowered your score.  See Kim Jong-il.

Thanks for the questions and it sounds like you’ll have a house soon.

Paul

This author is not an attorney and this information should not be considered legal advice.  Please consult an attorney for legal advice.