you know anything about credit report disputes
Any of you know anything about credit report disputes and whatnot?
I think I may be in a real pickle.
I got turned down for credit recently, much to my surprise, because of
some supposedly 90-day+ late payments. Knowing I have no such thing, I
got copies of all my credit reports and saw that AT&T (my cell provider)
had mysteriously reported a bunch of late payments. I know this isn't
true. I have all my bills and all my bank statements to prove it. I
contact AT&T Wireless and they verified on the phone that they see no
record of late payments, but that they have a credit management company
that takes care of that stuff and my only option was to dispute it with
the credit bureaus. So, that's what I did.
Now, it occurs to me that this may *not* be my cell account, but a
*slammed* residential account from last year (despite the fact that it's
listed as cellular on one of the reports). Here's why I think so: AT&T
billed me for $2 (yeah, that's right, $2) for one phone call last
spring. I disputed it because I was not an AT&T customer and had not
requested a phone company switch. My real phone company verified that,
in fact, a company switch had never been approved and had never
happened, and there's no way I should have been billed. I thought
everything had been taken care of. Now, I've noticed that one one of
the bureau's reports, the high balance listed on the account is $2, and
the account is listed as "closed due to consumer request."
Now here's the problem. As far as I can tell, I'm only legally able to
dispute a credit report item *once*, and I've already disputed this one
on the basis that I've never paid the bill late (thinking it was my cell
account), when it may turn out that the real problem is that it's a
fraudulent account that I didn't immediately recognize as such because I
do have another account with them.
Am I just screwed? Am I going to be turned down for credit for the next
6 years because AT&T slammed me for two fucking dollars?
-the good news is, the credit reporting agencies are supposed to
remove any bad information from your credit report, if it can't be verified.
You've disputed it. Good. Now ammend your first dispute to state that you
never owed money to AT&T, as