WHERE DOES YOUR CREDIT DISPUTE LETTER REALLY GO?
You might have read the story about a person who used Apple Air Tags to track where plastic recycling and recycling materials actually travelled and how the recycled materials were actually processed. The tracking of the tags revealed that the materials were not actually being recycled and were just being stacked and collected. Similarly, consumers would be surprised to discover where credit dispute letters of inaccurate credit report information to credit reporting agencies go, and how credit reporting agencies actually process disputes of inaccurate credit information.
Step One: The First Stop for Your Dispute Letter
Generally, the first stop is not to the credit bureaus where you sent the letter, but rather to a mail processing center of an outsourced third party. The mail processing company opens the credit dispute letter, scans the letter and sorts it so that the next outsourced processing company can open the credit dispute letter and notify the furnisher of the disputed credit data. Thus, if you thought that Experian, Trans Union, and Equifax actually saw your dispute, you would be mistaken.
At that point, outsourced vendors are in possession of all of your sensitive financial information including your name, address, social security number and date of birth. Equifax and Trans Union send most of their disputes to a company called Teleperformance located in India.
As to Experian, it outsources a substantial portion of its consumer credit disputes to an Experian related entity in Chile that it claims is a separate legal entity. 60 Minutes did a feature on that Experian entity in which they spoke with former employees of Experian’s Chilean company titled “40 Million Mistakes.” The 60 Minutes piece noted that the credit dispute reinvestigation process is generally a secret operation that is “hard to crack.”
The video had a specific example of an outsourced processor in India and noted that the representative probably will not be much help. Three former Experian processors noted that they were expected to process 90 disputes a day and that they had no phone or email access to actually conduct any real investigation of the consumer credit dispute with the final result likely being a conclusion that the creditor was right about what they reported.
In our experience, this chain of events is true for virtually all of the consumers that we have assisted with credit report inaccuracies and relatively little has changed over the years to assist consumers in resolving credit report disputes.
Step Two: The Automated System (E-OSCAR)
The outsourced processors use an automated system to communicate with the furnisher of the inaccurate credit information named E-OSCAR. This system uses a special language of electronic codes to create a standardized form that generally summarizes the issue in a form called an ACDV, which stands for Automated Consumer Disputed Verification Form.
The form is then electronically routed to the furnisher of the information for their investigation. Keep in mind that many furnishers also outsource their credit reporting investigation duties as well, so your dispute may be outsourced from one country to another or maybe just from one India-based processor to another.
This reliance on electronic codes and automated outsourced processes oversimplifies the disputes and makes it almost impossible for a consumer to have a meaningful investigation conducted of their credit dispute. In addition, when the results of the ACDV are returned to the credit reporting agency, there is typically no human review of the data returned to make sure that the information can be verified as accurate for purposes of credit reporting.
The computer simply instructs that the results of the reinvestigation be mailed to a consumer with the likely result that the account has been verified as accurate, which creates even more frustration for the consumer. Many consumers feel like they are banging their head into a wall when engaging in the credit dispute process.
Step Three: Why You Need an Experienced Credit Report Lawyer
An experienced credit report lawyer that knows the process is critical in both protecting consumer rights and correcting inaccurate information on a credit report. Blankingship & Christiano, P.C. represents consumers that are the victims of inaccurate credit reporting including accounts that are included on a credit report that were opened by identity theft.
If you have any inaccurate information on your credit report please contact us for a consultation.
