3 | Roberta Whitacre
November 25, 2009 at 3:45 pm

unfortunately, after the death of my first husband suddenly I had to file chapter 7 bankruptcy. I did not want to do it but I still had a child to raise; but I did re- affirm with several companies that I owed. That was in 1994. Later I re married and wanted to buy a home but figured I would not be able to but it turned out that I had rebuilt my credit enough so that my income could be combined with my husband’s to get a loan and at a lower interest rate. In fact, I was told at the time that my credit was not that bad after rebuilding and of course I did have to write a statement to the bank financing the loan why I did file bankruptcy. We bought a house in 1999; in 2002, when Interest rates dropped, we went to refinance so that we would save abt. $100 per month on our house payment; when the loan officer ran my credit report right in front of me; he stated, “I don’t see how you even got a house; it says you have been late on an account 22 times out of the last 24. I was in total shock but because of some stupid law he could not even print out a copy for me. I got a copy myself and sure enough there it was; and I could not for the life of me figure it out at first. I found that there was an account on there I had never heard of; now mind you this is by this time 8 years after the bankruptcy. I pulled out all of my records and the only way I found anything about it on my records was by account numbers. Here is what happened the bank that the debt was discharged, sold or was bought by Fleet bank and they had that I owed Fleet; so anyway I worked for weeks getting all my ducks in a row; I checked every account on my report so that I would report all mistakes at once; but now here is the really bad part, because of that being on my report when we tried to refinance, in order to do so, my name had to be taken off my own house mortgage, and they could only use my husband’s income to refinance.. because of the FCRA’s and the BANK’s that either do not check, or the bank they buy does not bother to let them know which accounts had been discharged, I lost rights to my house. I have been upset about this for years and yes, I filed bankruptcy and I know some people look at people who do that like they are terrible but at least when I did it I did follow the law. These sleazy, slimy, FCRA’s especially Equifax, who pride themselves on being right all the time, did not follow the law. I sent the errors to all the major FCRA’s and two of them removed the bad info right away although it was too late for the refinancing; but Equifax refused; in fact, they just wrote, that the Fleet account was included in a bankruptcy but still had that I was late 22 times; I never had a Fleet Account. I called and called and finally got a representative who would not or could not understand what I was saying so I asked for a supervisor. I held on; the Rep came back and finally told me the Supervisor would call me back because she was busy at the moment. She never called.
I think there should be a law that when someone tries to report any negative info to any F.C.R.A. about a person, that person needs to be notified before it gets put on their credit report, and they should be given 30 days to respond to show that it is in error, that way more consumers have the chance to stop it in it’s tracks before they are ruined; not just people like me that have filed bankruptcy but people that have never missed a payment and then wrong info gets put on. They need to have a law like that and then if the person proves the info in error let the F>C>R>A>’s charge the people that tried to put it on someone’s account; maybe then the banks and collection agencies will stop and check things out before they ruin othe people’s lives. I reported abuse about Equifax in particular but it has taken seven years for them to even get a class action law suit against ; when I called I was told they could not do anything about it until more people complained. The largest amount that is being offered to anyone who has been denied credit for their mistakes is $750, which is nothing, compared to taking someone’s house using wrong information and yes, sure, I could have waited and then we would have lost the savings of the $100 per month we saved by having my husband refinance on his own. Now, I basically just have dower rights and the bank will not even talk to me about the house even though the payment is being withdrawn automatically from a joint account with my name on it. They are getting off easy, too easy. We really need to suggest some change like I mentioned to the Congress if they will even listen. Why should we suffer because of the incompetence of the F.C.R.A. employees, or because of fraud one bank commits against another by not even telling them about discharged accounts, or just the fact that the new owner of the accounts will try to get the money even if they know they should not be putting that on someone’s credit report.

5 | Roberta Whitacre
November 25, 2009 at 6:19 pm

Thank you Julie for such kind words. I did not mean to go on and on
but unfortunately so many people suffer and I do think that before negative things are put on someone’s report they should be notified; not after; after it is too difficult to get off of a report.
I will have a nice day tomorrow and I do hope you and everyone
else does too.
Thank You
Roberta