Bad Credit Services

Not surprisingly, Manning recommends that students check their credit reports. Clearly, today s graduates face greater challenges in managing their finances so as not to jeopardize their finances. The National Consumers League has a page on its Web site dedicated to student debt issues.²⁹⁸ Divorce Divorce can have a dramatic impact on the divorcee s credit score and credit report. A major problem is that divorcees often don t realize the extent to which their credit relationships can continue to entangle each other s lives well after divorce. Or, they are so overwhelmed with the emotional and logistical difficulties of separation that there is little time left for separating and straightening out credit relationships. But that is precisely what you need to do: ensure that your name is no longer on accounts for which you are not responsible for paying. During the divorce, the husband and wife usually work out a division of debts that receives final approval from the judge. Divorcees often think that any debt assigned to their ex-spouse by the court frees them from that debt for ever after. bad credit credit creditres

²⁹⁷ Id

. ²⁹⁸ www.nclnet.org/moneyandcredit/index.htm The problem is that your creditors usually don t know about your divorce. In terms of the credit report, problems arise when the ex-spouse who is responsible for paying an account, fails to, and the other spouse, according to the creditor s records, is still a co-signer or joint user or otherwise associated with the account. The failure to pay goes on the credit report of the innocent spouse, creating a fresh derogatory that slams that spouse s credit score. bad consolidation credit debt

Thus, it is vital that divorcees identify all of their accounts and separate them completely. This includes mortgages, credit cards, bank loans, debit cards, store charge cards, lines of credit, and overdraft checking. Some authors suggest that spouses begin separating accounts as soon as they consider separating.²⁹⁹ bad company credit repair

Of course, it s also crucial that divorcees obtain their credit reports to check the accuracy of information. Bankruptcy Bankruptcy is the most derogatory item that can appear on your credit report. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a bankruptcy can stay on your report for 10 years. But that does not mean you can no longer get credit. As Gerri Detweiler, a renowned expert on credit explains in her 1997 book, The Ultimate Credit Handbook, (Plume) people can rebuild their credit after bankruptcy or other traumas. It requires patience and a plan. It starts with checking the credit report to see where you stand. If you still have open accounts, try to negotiate with creditors to improve the way they report on you to the credit bureaus, Detweiler advises. Try to catch up on any accounts for which there might be late payments. bad card credit credit

²⁹⁹

Ventura, John The Credit Repair Kit (Dearborn 1998 3rd Edition); or see Sember, Brette McWhorter, Repair Your Own Credit and Deal With Debt (Sphinx 2003 2nd Edition) Next, try to re-establish positive lines of credit. A bank card, paid on time over time, is one of the stronger credit references you can add. In the beginning, she says, you might need to get a secured credit card, which requires you to deposit money so use of the card is secured against those deposits.³⁰⁰ But be careful: both Detweiler and the FTC warn there are a lot of scam artists offering secured credit cards. The BankCard Holders of America (BHA) provides a list of institutions offering secured cards.³⁰¹ bad car credit loan

Perhaps the best scholarship on bankruptcy is found in the books of Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren.³⁰² Warren has pointed out that of the 1.66 million bankruptcies filed in fiscal year 2003, nearly 40% were by husband-wife couples, meaning that the number of people who actually filed for bankruptcy in that year was 2.14 million.³⁰³ bad credit loan mortgage

Warren said that women were both the fastest growing and largest demographic group in bankruptcy. There were 1, 661, 996 bankruptcies filed in fiscal year 2003, up 7.4% from the 1, 547, 669 filings in fiscal year 2002. Since 1994, when filings totaled 837, 797, bankruptcies in federal courts have increased 98%. From 1991-95, annual bankruptcy filings hovered around 870, 000. The biggest noticeable jump occurred in 1995-1996, when they went from 874, 642 to 1, 125, 006.³⁰⁴ Interestingly, that is when credit card companies sharply escalated their use of direct marketing solicitations offering pre-approved credit card offers. It is estimated that the industry now sends out five billion unsolicited credit card applications annually. auto bad credit loan

³⁰⁰

Detweiler continues to advise consumers and publish, see www.ultimatecredit.com, and www.DebtConsolidationRX.com, or for her new E-Book, www. .com ³⁰¹ Send a check or money order for $4.00 to: Secured Credit Card List BHA Customer Service, 524 Branch Drive Salem, VA 24153. Also see http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/secured.htm ³⁰² Warren, Elizabeth, Bankruptcy (West 2002), and, Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi, The Two-Income Trap, (Basic Books 2003) bad credit mortgage refinance

³⁰³

http://www.bankruptcyaction.com/USbankstats.htm ³⁰⁴ http://www.abiworld.org/stats/1980annual.html Many consumers who complete a bankruptcy find that bad debts that were supposed to be discharged as part of the bankruptcy are later erroneously included on credit reports. Robert Weed, an Alexandria, Virginia attorney, said he regularly must file motions in federal bankruptcy court in order to get creditors to stop reporting discharged debts and to get the credit reporting agencies to remove them. bad credit refinance

Included In Bankruptcy

A special problem arises for individuals who are co-signers, or are otherwise legally obligated for credit cards or loans, when the other co-signer files for bankruptcy. For many years, the CRAs would report such accounts as Included In Bankruptcy even if the non-bankrupt co-signer met his or her obligation and paid the bill on time. This had an adverse impact on the creditworthiness of non-bankrupt consumers. Not only did it seem to have a negative impact on their credit scores, but also major institutions like Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and insurance companies do an automated scan of credit reports for serious derogatory items like bankruptcy, foreclosure, or judgment. This meant that a co-signer could be denied credit for an account that he or she in fact paid responsibly. bad credit mortgage second

A class action lawsuit was filed over the issue in federal court in South Carolina. U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie had given preliminary approval to a settlement with all three CRAs that if adopted, would stop them from reporting the term bankruptcy to the credit reports of consumers who have not filed for bankruptcy.³⁰⁵ bad credit loan student

³⁰⁵ Franklin E. Clark, et al. v. Experian Information Solutions, Inc.

: C/A No. 8:00-1217-22; www.fcraclassaction.com; Equifax had proposed allowing it to continue reporting included in the bankruptcy of another, but the proposal was abandoned after additional attorneys entered the case to object. The objectors were led by Michael Caddell, of Caddell and Chapman, Houston Texas. bad card credit

MBNA appealed Judge Williams decision. But on February 11, 2004, a three-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed, finding that MBNA s standard response to consumer disputes did not amount to a true reinvestigation under the FCRA. bad credit financing

¹²⁹ Johnson v. MBNA

, op. cit., bench ruling February 24, 2003 MBNA argues that the language of 1681s-2(b)(1)(A), requiring furnishers of credit information to conduct an investigation regarding disputed information, imposes only a minimal duty on creditors to briefly review their records to determine whether the disputed information is correct, the panel wrote, in an opinion authored by Chief Judge William W. Wilkens. Stated differently, MBNA contends that this provision does not contain any qualitative component that would allow courts or juries to assess whether the creditor s investigation was reasonable. ¹³⁰ bad credit home loan mortgage

The key term at issue here, investigation, is defined [by the dictionary] as a detailed inquiry or systematic examination. Thus, the plain meaning of investigation clearly requires some degree of careful inquiry by creditors, he wrote. bad credit loan people

Further, he said, the statute uses the term investigation in the context of articulating a creditor s duties in the consumer dispute process outlined by the FCRA. It would make little sense to conclude that, in creating a system intended to give consumers a means to dispute and, ultimately, correct inaccurate information on their credit reports, Congress used the term investigation to include superficial, unreasonable inquiries by creditors. We therefore hold that 1681s-2(b)(1) requires creditors, after receiving notice of a consumer dispute from a credit reporting agency, to conduct a reasonable investigation of their records to determine whether the disputed information can be verified. bad card credit credit people

MBNA also tried to argue that its investigation in Johnson s case was reasonable. But the court pointed to the specific nature of Johnson s dispute, and the testimony of MBNA agents that their investigation was primarily limited to (1) confirming that the name and address listed on the ACDVs were the same as the name and address contained in the Customer Information System, and (2) noting that the CIS contained a code indicating that Johnson was the sole responsible party on the account. bad credit guaranteed loan

The MBNA agents also testified that, in investigating consumer disputes generally, they do not look beyond the information contained in the CIS and never consult underlying documents such as account applications. Based on this evidence, a jury could reasonably conclude that MBNA acted unreasonably in failing to verify the accuracy of the information contained in the CIS, he wrote. bad credit refinancing

¹³⁰ Linda Johnson v. MBNA America Bank

: CA-4 - No. 31-1235; Feb. 11, 2004 Richard Rubin, a Sante Fe, New Mexico attorney who argued the case for Johnson before the Fourth Circuit, noted that the panel adopted his position that had MBNA simply told the truth and stated that its investigation was inconclusive, the CRAs would have deleted the tradeline as required by the FCRA, and the litigation never would have occurred. bad credit equity home loan

Veracity - History of the Credit Bureaus and Reporting Agencies (CRA)

condemned to repeat it. - George Santayana, Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense, Scribner s, 1905, page 284 Credit bureaus had humble beginnings. Local credit bureaus started taking shape in the late 1800s, when merchants who increasingly offered credit needed to keep track of those who failed to repay. One of the first credit bureaus was established in Brooklyn in 1860.¹³¹ bad credit loan payday

Equifax was founded as the Retail Credit Co. in Atlanta in 1899 by brothers Cator and Guy Woolford, who compiled credit records of the city s citizens in a Merchants Guide that they sold to local grocers for $25 a year.¹³² bad credit repair

Also in the 1890s, J.E.R. Chilton started to collect information on customers in Dallas, Texas. In 1906, the first national organization of credit bureaus was founded the National Association of Retail Credit Agencies. It later became the Associated Credit Bureaus (ACB); it is now known as the Consumer Data Industry Association (CDIA). ¹³¹ Cole, R.H. (1992), Consumer and Commercial Credit Management (Irwin, Homewood) bad credit home loan uk

¹³²

Serwer, Andy, Street Life: Credit Bureaus Exposed, Fortune.com, April 14, 2003 This original organization was set up as a network of six small credit bureaus. The number of credit bureaus increased remarkably in the 1920s as well as the 1950s with the introduction of credit cards and installment credit. During that period, the credit reporting market was homegrown: information was collected from local lenders and distributed locally.¹³³ 2nd bad credit mortgage

Automation Consolidation

In the 1970s, however, the industry started to automate on a larger scale. Database concentration led to industry consolidation. The larger market-players began to bring smaller bureaus into their computer systems to benefit from their information collection. Smaller agencies used the computer processing power and network of the larger companies. Local credit bureaus either became affiliates of one of the bigger players, or remained independent as resellers of credit reports. bad credit loan unsecured

In the 1970s, there were 2, 250 credit bureaus in the market. This number has been reduced to 1, 833 bureaus in 1997. Currently, it is estimated there are only 220 independent resellers. In the 1980s, there were five national credit reporting agencies: Trans Union, TRW, Equifax, Chilton Corporation and Pinger Systems. The Chilton Corporation eventually merged with TRW, whereas Pinger was sold to the Computer Science Corporation (CSC). CSC is a separate company, but for credit-reporting and operational purposes, it is now an affiliate of Equifax. bad consolidation credit loan

Credit reporting was only one division of TRW. Other divisions were devoted to aerospace and automotive parts. TRW later purchased Chilton. In the mid-1990s, TRW sold its credit reporting division, renamed Experian, to an intermediary. Experian was later bought by Grand Universal Stores, a United Kingdom company that continues as owner. bad credit home loan new

¹³³

Jentzsch, Nicola, The Regulation of Financial Privacy: U.S. vs. Europe, European Credit Research Institute (ECRI Report No. 5 - June 2003) The Marmon Group is a Chicago-based company, privately owned by the Pritzkers of Chicago, one of America s wealthiest families. The Pritzkers also own the Hyatt Hotel chain. In 1981, the Marmon Group bought a large, failing amalgamation of businesses called Trans Union, which was into railcar and equipment leasing, water treatment, and international trade. It also had a credit bureau, a business that grew from a company called the Credit Bureau of Cook County. bad business credit loan

As recently as September 2002, long after the Ford Motor Company incident had been well publicized, the Cummings ring ordered 4, 500 credit reports through Central Texas Energy Supply. When a company did change its password, it temporarily stumped the ring member s laptop on which Cummings had downloaded passwords. But after being arrested, the ring member later cooperated with prosecutors and told them that Cummings had an ample list of additional passwords that still worked. bad credit lender mortgage

The result was that some 30, 000 individuals had their good names used for fraud - with initial losses pegged at $2.7 million, but rising well beyond that.⁷⁶ The Key Moment Of course, identity theft is profitable because the thief is able to get credit in someone else s name. That s where the credit report comes into play. The key moment occurs when the credit reporting agency (CRA) discloses the innocent victim s credit report in response to a thief s fraudulent application for credit. The credit report validates the thief and starts him on his credit joyride. As we will explore in greater detail in a later chapter, the CRAs rather loose algorithms have benefited identity thieves by allowing for disclosure of victims credit reports even when the imposters applications are filled with discrepancies. bad credit home loan mobile

⁷⁶

TCI and other breaches were the subject of April 3, 2003 hearing of the House Financial Services Subcommittees on Financial Institutions Consumer Credit, and Oversight and Investigations, Fighting Fraud: Improving Information Security, at which this author testified. http://financialservices.house.gov/hearings.asp formmode=detail hearing=202. Also see the excellent reporting on security breaches, identity theft, and more by MSNBC s Bob Sullivan www.msnbc.com/news/839678.asp bad cash credit loan

Victims

A book could be filled with the horrifying stories of identity theft victims. To help illustrate their plight, we will offer only a few. On November 5, 2001, retired Army Captain John Harrison, a Connecticut resident, received a call from a detective in Beaumont, Texas who was investigating a Harley-Davidson motorcycle that had been purchased using Harrison s name and SSN. The detective tracked Harrison down through his credit report. Harrison took all the steps that were recommended by experts (and the above pages in this chapter): He ordered his three credit reports, initiated fraud alerts, contacted creditors immediately, received and reviewed his credit reports, and filed a police report with the Army s Criminal Investigation Division.⁷⁷ bad credit loan private

The crook, Jerry Wayne Phillips, was caught on his Harley in North Carolina about a month later. Phillips said it was easy to convince Army officials at Fort Bragg, N.C. to issue him identification in Harrison s name and SSN. bad card credit debt

Joyriding

From July to December 2001, Phillips used Harrison s identity to acquire goods, services, and cash in his name. The acquired items were valued at over $260, 000. Staying away from Harrison s home state of Connecticut, Phillips bounced from Florida to Virginia, and on to Texas, opening at least 60 fraudulent accounts: credit accounts, personal and auto loans, checking and savings accounts, and utility accounts. He purchased two trucks through Ford Credit valued at over $85, 000, and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle for $25, 000. He rented a house in Virginia and purchased a time-share in Hilton Head, South Carolina. He bounced over 100 checks on his Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) checking account. Phillips was indicted on federal charges in Texas, pled guilty to one count of identity theft, and was sentenced to 41 months in a Minnesota federal prison. bad business credit loan small

⁷⁷

Statement of Capt. John C. Harrison, U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, The Growing Problem of Identity Theft and Its Relationship to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, June 19, 2003. Harrison filed suit under the FCRA. He was represented by Chris Kittell, of Webster Gresham Kittell, Clarksdale, Miss. http://banking.senate.gov/index.cfm Fuseaction=Hearings.Testimony HearingID=43 WitnessID=177 bad bankruptcy car credit loan

But that did not end the damage to Harrison. One of the more difficult aspects was the 20-month struggle with credit bureaus and creditors. While Experian and Trans Union did a fair job, he charged that Equifax failed to obey the FCRA. bad credit instant loan

It took eleven months and three dispute letters to get a second report from Equifax. Further, I found the report they sent to me was not the same report they were sending to creditors. Both reports that Equifax has in their system still contain as many as fifteen fraudulent accounts, Harrison told Congress in June 2003. On his credit report, he had 17 different addresses, six different phone numbers, and a changing date of birth, he said. bad credit equity loan

Credit bureaus hide behind the fact that they are only reporting what creditors tell them, while at the same time, victims are repeatedly sending affidavits, police reports, and detailed dispute letters proving the creditors are wrong. That is why it takes identity theft victims years instead of months to recover from this crime. bad credit georgia home loan

I ve invested over 1, 100 hours of my time defending myself and working to restore my credit and banking histories. I ve filled eight notebooks with over 1, 500 pages of documentation. I can account for about $1, 500 in out-of-pocket expenses directly related to my identity theft. Higher interest rates have cost me over $4, 000. I ve been unknowingly sued by at least one of the creditors. I ve had my military retirement garnished. I m not credit worthy enough to open any new accounts and bad checks reported in my name prevent me from opening any deposit accounts with banks. application bad card credit

Harrison said the toughest part might be the emotional distress he suffered. He was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and given medication. He lost his job. Harrison has filed an FCRA lawsuit, which is still pending. bad credit home loan va

Sadly, even as I look back over the last twenty months and retrace my steps, I can t identify a single thing I could have done differently that may have prevented the situation I m currently in, Harrison said. bad credit home loa

monebaggasse