Your credit report

is made up of information reported by businesses that you have done business with. If you get a car loan the bank will pull your credit. This gives that bank access to ALL of your credit history and it is logged as in inquiry. Federal law regulates who may access your report, for what purpose, and what they can do with that information.
Should the bank decide to lend you the money then the loan will show on your credit report as a trade line. Various information will be included such as balance and your payment history. If you pay on time that is reflected. If you pay late that is also reflected.
Other things on your credit report could include collection items. If you neglect to pay the Dr.'s office that $12 that the insurance company did not pay them they can place it on your credit report as a bad debt.
How does anyone know that the information is correct?
Honestly they don't. In most cases it is because generally people try to do the right thing. A bank will probably not report a loan on your report that you did not take out because simply there is no reason to do so.
What if a mistake is made though? Well, then you as a consumer can file a dispute. The credit bureau then "investigates". By investigates I mean they send an electronic message [similar to an email] to the person who reported the information in the first place. For example, lets say Bob works for ABC lending and reports a loan in the amount of $25,000 on Susans credit and states that she is past due 30 days. Susan's account is acutally up to date. She was not late she she files a dispute with the credit bureau. The credit bureau sends Bob a message and says your reported whatever is on Susans credit is this correct? Bob then says yes or no. Often Bob is honest. What if Bob does not like Susan? What if Bob is fighting with his wife, his kids hate him, he has heart burn from the overstuffed burrito he had for lunch and just does not care so he clicks yes or no in response to a coin flip.
What if the motives are more sinister? What if Bob never loaned money to Susan? What if Bob discovered that he can seriously disrupt Susans life by manipulating her credit report? What if it is all a lie. What if Bob calls Susan and tells her it is cheaper to just pay him to remove the fake info than it would be for her to spend years litigating all the while having no meaningful access to credit?
Susan has no reacourse other than to file a lawsuit against Bob and the credit bureau to compell them to fix it.
Why would a credit bureau not take an interest in making sure the informatino reproted is correct? Credit reporting is huge business. Experian does 2 billion in sales in the US alone each year. They don't care about Bob or Susan. They care about the integrity of their product. The truth is they have no idea if anything on anyones report is accurate or not. By their own admission they get as many as 20,000 disputes each day. They lack the manpower to really investigate each of these. So the simply claim it is all true and sell their product as though it is.
The names are made up. The story is real. See www.marauderexposed.com and read the initial filing in the federal lawsuit.

Thanks for posting this! I'm sending it to everyone I know - my FB friends are going to hate me

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/man-wins-15m-vulgar-debt-collection-calls/story?id=10795674
Man Wins $1.5M Over Profane Debt Collection Calls



Collections Agents Allegedly Used N-Word, Sexual Language in Voicemails



28 comments
By ALICE GOMSTYN and DALIA FAHMY

June 1, 2010



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A jury has awarded a Texas man more than $1.5 million in a lawsuit over profane voicemail messages allegedly left by a collections agency.


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Allen Jones receives profanity-laced collection agency calls.



Lawyers for Allen Jones, of Lewisville, Texas, say he was subjected to harassing phone calls from Advanced Call Center Technologies. Employees, lawyers said, used the n-word and the f-word and made racially-charged remarks about Jones, who is black.
In one voicemail message, a collector suggested that Jones "go pick some m*****f****** cotton fields," according to recordings provided by Jones' lawyers.
"It got out of control," Jones, 26, said. "It was horrific."
Dean Siotos, a lawyer for Advanced Call Center Technologies, called the language in the voicemails "indefensible" and said that the calls allegedly placed by ACT employees "must have been in some sort of personal attack unrelated to the business."
"It's not in any way, shape or form consistent with the way ACT's collection deparment attempted to collect debts," he said.
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Two ACT employees named in Jones' lawsuit no longer work at the company, Siotos said. He said the company, which has headquarters in Pennsylvania, will wait until an official judgment is entered on the jury verdict before deciding whether to appeal. The jury issued its verdict last Friday.
Jones said that the collection calls took place in August, 2007 and stemmed from an $81 credit card debt. Jones said the he had actually paid off the debt at the time he started receiving calls from ACT, but the collections agents wouldn't stop calling even after he told them the debt was resolved.
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The calls came as early as 6:30 a.m. and as late as 11 p.m., said lawyer Dean Malone, who along with Mark Frenkel, represented Jones in the case. In addition to profanity, one of the messages included a sexual message about Jones' wife, Malone said.
"It was just significant, over-the-top harassment," he said. "I've handled hundreds of these cases over the years. This is by far the worst I've ever seen."
After a two-week trial, a jury found ACT and its former employees had violated Texas debt collection rules and awarded Jones $50,000 for mental anguish, $143,000 in attorney's fees and $1.5 million in additional damages.

I think that the $1,693,000 jury verdict will have he net result of promting the collection business to.... do not a single thing differently. It is a cost of doing business that they will absorb and move right on to the next one.
To really change the behavior a court would have to impose significant jail time on some of the participants.

Scott wrote:I think that the $1,693,000 jury verdict will have he net result of promting the collection business to.... do not a single thing differently. It is a cost of doing business that they will absorb and move right on to the next one.
To really change the behavior a court would have to impose significant jail time on some of the participants.

That's unbelievable. Too bad criminal charges could not have been filed against the actual callers.

"Disputing Information


The first step in order to dispute information is to request a copy of your report directly from Experian and review it carefully. If you find an error, simply follow the dispute instructions online or call or write the credit reporting company (as instructed on your credit report). There is no fee to dispute credit information.
The credit reporting company will check with the source of the information and send you an update. If you continue to disagree with the information, you can add a statement of dispute to the credit report. Please be specific with your dispute. The credit dispute process can take up to 30 days from the date the dispute is received. However, most disputes today are completed within a much shorter period of time."
This is an except from Experian's web site about disputes. www.experian.com if anyone is interested.
Please note what really happens. I highlighted part in red. Experian "checks with the source of the information". Meaning if someone claims you owe them money and you disagree then Experian investigates the claim by checking with the person who originally reported the information. Think about that.
They are allowing reporters to self regulate. These reporters of information also at times include potential criminals. If only the rest of the legal system was allowed to work that way. We could empty out prisons just by asking the inmates if they were really guilty. Somehow I would guess a lot of them would just say.. "no not me."
IMO the whole credit system is in need of a serious overhaul AND some real oversight by federal authorities. Consumers and fraud victims don't need more published opinion letters. They need enforcement of criminal laws.