Speaking of credit history (in my other OT post of the day) it made me
think of something that has been bothering me lately.
First, some background. Up to Sept 2001, I lived in Evanston, IL (just
north of Chicago) and rented an apartment in which I subscribed to DSL
service from Telocity. I was pleased with their service for the ~2 years
I had it (I had a 1 year contract when it got installed, and after 1
year it went to a month-to-month contract). In June or July, 2001,
Telocity sent out an email and a letter that Telocity was going out of
business (unfortunately, I didn't keep copies) and that our service
would automatically be terminated on a certain date in August unless we
contacted Telocity to switch us over to an alternative with DirectTV DSL
(who had bought Telocity and incidentally got out of the DSL business
recently).
When I was moving out of Evanston in Aug/Sep 2001, I naturally called
all the utilities to cancel service, and just to be sure I called
Telocity to cancel the DSL but the person on the phone told me that
it wasn't necessary to cancel, that my service would be automatically
terminated since I didn't request switchover to DirectTV.
After I moved to New Jersey, I found that my credit card was still being
billed by DirectTV for $40 a month for DSL. I called DirectTV, and
after being on hold for 45 minutes (!#%$#!), I finally got a person,
who claimed that my DSL service had not been cancelled. I told her the
above story about the letter that the service would automatically be
cancelled and about my call to verify the cancellation, and she said,
"we have no record of your call". I asked to talk to her supervisor, and
after another 30 minutes of hold time (!#%#%), I got almost the exact
same story from the supervisor. What's worse, they claimed they would
continue billing me until I paid for the 2 months after the service
was supposed to have been cancelled (when I had already moved out and
obviously was not using the service). They wouldn't budge on this --
I don't think I have ever had to deal with a less reasonable customer
service representative in a big business than these people. Anyway, I
told them that I was not paying for service that I cancelled and did not
use and was not even in the apartment for, and that I would contact my
credit card company (MBNA) to get the charge removed.
I contacted MBNA, and they put me on a 3-way call to DirectTV. I warned
the lady at MBNA about the long hold times, but she said she had another
contact number, which we were on hold for about 10 minutes before the
MBNA lady told me she would continue holding and call me back. Long
story short, MBNA didn't call me back, but the charge was removed. Then
next month, there is ANOTHER charge on my credit card from MBNA. I
call MBNA and go through almost the same thing as before, and when
they don't resolve anything, I ask MBNA to block DirectTV from making
any more charges to my credit card. They say they can't do that. I
say that I don't want to have to call them every month to dispute the
charge. They say there is nothing they can do. I say that I will cancel
my MBNA card. They say that won't accomplish anything. I say I will do
it anyway. That got their attention, so they forwarded me to a senior
account manager, who assured me she would contact DirectTV DSL and get
things resolved.
Apparently, something worked, because I didn't get any more charges from
DirectTV.
Fast forward about 1 year, to late 2002. I'd been getting a number of
credit card applications in the mail that offer 0% APR on purchases for
9-12 months. Now, I have an excellent credit history. I paid off a $20K
car loan and have had various credit cards for 12 years without ever
missing a payment. Anyway, I thought I'd take advantage of the 0% APR
by running a balance for a while and taking the savings and putting it
in my ING Direct account which currently pays 2.25% APY. I was quite
surprised when I got rejected for the credit card application.
Checking my credit report, it turns out that DirectTV (or the collection
agency DirectTV turned my account over to?) put a notation on my credit
report:
Client:
Directv Account Number: 395XXXX
Date Reported: 03/2002
Amount: 120
Balance: 120
Balance Date: 03/2002
Last Activity:01/2002
Date Assigned: 02/2002
Collection Status: UNPAID
Whose Account: INDIVIDUAL ACCOUNT
Collection Agency Information:
Nationwide Credit Inc
2253 Northwest Pkwy SE
Marietta,GA 30067-8764
Status Date: 03/2002
Apparently (according to www.equifax.com, where I got the credit report)
this one notation, the sole black mark on my credit record, is enough
to bring me down to a FICO score of 655, which puts me in the 25th
percentile of credit quality. It supposedly takes *SEVEN YEARS* for this
entry to disappear.
Equifax had a way to dispute the entry, but I haven't heard back from
them about the dispute I filed. I will try calling them this week.
So, that's the story. I didn't realize before now that it was so easy
for a dishonest or incompetent company to totally screw up a person's
credit record and for the person to have so little recourse to fix it.
This is costing me some money now, and I certainly hope it doesn't cost
me more money in the future (hopefully it doesn't cause problems if I
apply for a home loan in the future, but I guess at a minimum it will
probably make it harder for me to get the most favorable interest rate)
I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on what I might
do? Should I argue with the collection agency (that seems unlikely to
help)? DirectTV? Some consumer group? Forget about it? I hate to let
DirectTV get away with this crap, but I'm not sure what is the best way
to proceed.
--
"Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.net/
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