Yeah It's been awhile hasnt it :)..
Update - I have a clean slate.
Rude Collector Sued, they had to pay my lawyer fees and I netted a cool 2k from the harassment case. They settled out of court unfortunately. Seemed they did not want to send over the CEO and the guy who called me to face the Federal Judge in Tarrant Co. TX.
Had a few hiccups. Cable account from 1997 tried posting on my credit. I slapped them down. Not sure why they decided to do that. I ordered cable at a Army barracks and it never worked so we killed the service after 5 tech visits. The building was torn down 2 months later and they continued to charge me service for 9 months after the building ceased to exist and a new one erected on the site. Luckily explaining this to them got it removed.
No more phone mess it's all gone as well. Never could get one credit collector to leave me alone even after my lawyer said they should stop soon, it expired a year ago.
Was able to buy a house a few years back at a good 6% interest rate and hopefully will be buying a new house with a even better rate.
In the end I'm now up to a 745 credit score from days I was suffering with sub 600's.
I believe high schools need to drill it into Seniors before they graduate how easy it is to screw up your credit for 7 years and the hell you will go through for it. Had I known I would of been more careful. Some of it could not be prevented (Unemployment during 2002 recession), but in the end I would of been better prepared to deal with these things.
Good luck to all. Final Post! www.creditboards.com is a great resource for anyone looking for help. I'm there sometimes as well giving advice to ranting against some of my former antagonists.
Long Time More CA Worries
We'll people I realize it's been nearly 9 months since my last post.
Update on my issues.
Really want to get rid of the truck I wasted all that time and money on. It sucks gass big time.
I've had the greatest conversation with a collector who decided to tell me what he thought about federal law and my intelligence level while I was recording him.
A unnamed telephone company has again sent a paid debt to a collection agency for the 2nd time this month. My lawyer will probably have fun with this one also.
And some company local to me thinks I was a customer of a unnamed cable comany this year when I've been a directv subscriber for 3 years.
All of this has coleased into my new nightmare of trying to trade in the truck for a smaller cheaper one. I owe none of these collectors or companies yet here I am suffering all this crap because of the power they have to ruin mine and anyone elses life they please.
Hell I was lucky to get a good interest rate on my house.
It is time for Laws that benefit the consumer when it comes to credit reporting and debt collection.
Credit Cards and Balances, Trucks, Tolls OH MY!
Our nations credit system is a nightmare. Corporations can make decisions or mistakes and dish out punishment as they see fit. We have to dodge the blows and bear the burden of proof.
Todays example is not technically credit related but would of been if I had moved and not left a fowarding address.
I sold my old truck to the dealer in July 04 for the new truck. Yesterday I receive a notice from the NTTA (North Texas Toll Authority) with a picture of my old truck and the bill of 231.75 for running the toll booth 10 times. Hell according to this record he made a 10 mile trip between 2 booths in less than 6 minutes.. that's about 110mph.. IIRC the speed limit on the George Bush turnpike is 60Mph.. that's 50 miles over the speed limit and a jailable offense. Remember these turnpike violations occured more than 30 days ago but today the county said the truck is still in my name. So not only is he running tolls and speeding excessively the jerk is dodging his taxes on the veichle. Of course I have proof that this truck was sold but what if he robbed a bank or killed someone and all they had was a tag number. The cops would come directly to my house and arrest me or worse.
Another weird thing struck me today. Equifax ignored my requests that my credit be repaired of certain clerical errors. Looks like CSC Credit Services holds my credit information here. What I dont get is if I lived in North Carolina Equifax would be managing it but becuase I live in Texas some company I never heard of has some right to take my records from Equifax a nationally known company and hold this information in El Paso, Texas. Are our credit records like Avon sales districts or what? I should have the right to know that my records were transferred from who and to who and printouts before and after the transferr to make sure that the information was re-entered correctly. Either way my 4.75 paid to the USPS to deliver the complaints was wasted becuase I now have to resubmit the same information to CSC Credit. Becuase Equifax cant foward it.
Finally my original thoughts on credit card balances. Did you know if you had one 300 dollar credit card it could be hurting your credit? It can shave up to 50 or so points off your credit scores. All becuase you're using 50% of your credit. It does not matter if you made 20k a year or 200k a year it does the same to you. If you had a 3000 dollar card and ran it up to the 50% mark it does the same amount of damage. My point here is that this 300 dollar card I was using as a budgeting tool and to re-establish my credit. After a year I learn that it did nothing becuase each month it usually gets reported before I pay it off. So it usually has a balance of 190-250 dollars sitting on it in the credit companies records. Reguardless that amount is 0 at the beginning of the month. So if you can get the bigger card I'd do it. You are more flexible to use it for small amounts if you keep your head on your shoulders. However the smaller card may do nothing for you other than bring your score down 50 points and if you were looking for good interest on a Car or House then you may be shooting youself in the foot. So unless your credit is so good you consistently stay in the 730's despite using 75% of your credit cards then watch out you may end up paying somewhere else.
9 October 2004
It's hard to be a rock stuck in a rock crusher. One one side I have rising mortgage rates with perdictions in 12 months of 7.1% for the best credit ratings. On the other I've got a screwed up group of credit reports despite my best attempts to clean up I just cant get them to all read the same. Thankfully I'm a military veteran and I qualify for a VA loan.
Today I received notification that my credit file was updated. I subscribe to equifax's credit watch so I get unlimited pulls with them. I knew what it was so I expected to see a 700 dollar debt say 0 Balance Paid in Full. However it reads $0 balance collection account.
Today I've gone through myfico.com and ran my reports..
Experian 622, Transunion 618, Equifax 682 which leaves me with a average of 608.
In comparison my wife has a 736 but is forcast to go 780-836 if we get her credit cards all paid off which is no biggie. That's the difference between not screwing up and screwing up big time. Worse is that she's 2 years younger than I am.
The Beginning
Hello
I'm a 26 year old military veteran. I'm sure some of you after reading that can imagine the beginning just as well as me. We never get paid much and in trying to squeeze out a lifestyle and have nice things I managed to screw my credit up seriously. Lets couple that with being laid off a year after I left the Army due to the Bush recession. By then I had a new truck so my unemployment checks went to paying for that becuase no transportation = no job. Also the truck even though purchased through a dodge dealer 2002 model in 2001 they refused to report it to the credit agencies. Lets fast foward to 2004 and I'm fighting tooth and nail to fix my credit to the best of my abilities. However after being at 653 I took the advice of a "credit simulator" and began to pay off my old debts which in my opinion is the right and honorable thing to do. However those scores have fallen to just barely an average of the big 3 to 585.
Everyone says hindsight is 20/20 so my advice to anyone nearing 18 years old or younger and may be starting on the path to earning credit dont bite off more than you can chew. And most importantly do everything in your power to ensure that the good credit gets reported.
My purpose of this blog is to serve as a record of sorts for myself and proof to others that credit when gone wrong is a nightmare. I am of the opinion that the system needs a rehaul, and that credit agencies need to be held accountable to their mistakes. Stiff fines and punishment is the only way to get them to update their systems where problems I've read so many times on the internet happen less and can be fixed with a minimum of fuss. I'm allowing comments for those who have had problems themselves to show the world how much hell it can put you through.
