Quixote

That one's taken already....

Let a little time pass (enough so that it is no longer showing as "in dispute" on your reports) and then dispute it directly with the creditor via CRRR. Pull your reports regularly for the 30 days following their receipt of the dispute. Save the reports. Now you spring the trap that they walked right into.

The beauty of the Nutcase approach and many of the alternate approaches is that in the mere act of disputing this account with the original creditor (I assume you have CRRR documentation), and their ignoring you, you have put them in a situation where they have violated the law. If you did it properly and said some sort of verbiage that is loosely translated as "That information you put in my credit report is wrong!" then they have an FCRA mandated obligation to report to the bureaus that "this account is in dispute". Of course they didn't do that. Go file in small claims this afternoon and see how fast they get reasonable.

Thanks for all the replies everybody! Kiowa, you have mail...

I heard from two different sources this week that HELOC's over $40k report as a mortgage and under $40K report as revolving debt. I had never heard that one, and I can't find anything to document it one way or the other. I have always seen them reported as revolving. Both these sources are reasonably well informed but couldn't point to any specific proof. Any ideas where I can find an answer to this one?

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/writing/2006...ng_rc_airp.html Click on 'Play'. You won't believe what you see.

I'm almost ashamed (but not really, because it takes a lot to make me ashamed... ) to admit that when I first went started on my own credit repair journey way back in the CreditNet days, I made up this cheesy form on a DOS word processor; check boxes and everything. I listed 10+ disputes per page and sent them in with just a stamp. I got about 50% deletions first try. With the follow up form letter asking for verification of procedures, I got half of the remainder. The rest were hard. Today, I see many of my clients doing various methods of disputing. Some are very sophisticated with individual letters sent CMRRR, spreadsheets to track it all, etc. Some use hand written letters with a stamp, some do it online, some fax, some call it in. And you know what? The first round still gets about 50% deletions, second round gets about half of what's left, and the rest are hard. The biggest obstacle is the one that keeps you from doing SOMETHING. ANYTHING. Get past that one, and you'll have some success. The thing I always remind people is that there is nobody out there who's job description is "Keep that guy right there down". So don't try one strategy. Try EVERY startegy. Keep attacking each derogatory tradeline from a new angle until they slip up. You only have to win once (per tradeline), "they" (whoever "they" are) have to stop you every single time. "They" are just seven dollar an hour schmucks who want to go home early. If you make it your full time pre-occupation to rebuild you're credit and implement your plan to do so, then you will, because nobody out there has a plan to stop you.

Ultimately, you just have to look at the rate additions and do some math. These are hypothetical, but I would expect to see something along these lines. Let's say you have priced out your $250,000 loan and it comes in on the dot for a 30 yr at 7%. Typically there are additions to the rate for going to longer amortizations, and I'm going to pull a couple of numbers out of thin air; .25 for a 40 yr and another .25 for 50 yr. Here's how that would break down payment wise: 30 yr @ 7.00% = $1663/mo. P+I 40 yr @ 7.25% = $1599/mo. P+I 50 yr @ 7.50% = $1600/mo. P+I Int. Only @ 7.35 = $1531/mo. IO You VERY quickly start reaching a point of diminishing or even no return on these longer terms. Not saying they're all bad, just that you have to look very closely at the figures. A wise man once said, "A difference, to be a difference, has to make a difference."

Done. In the immortal words of Trudy The Bag Lady (played by Lily Tomlin) in The Search For Signs Of Intelligent Life In The Universe, "No matter how paranoid you become, it's never enough to keep up."

I got an e-mail this morning asking me to verify my CB password and to name a new one, "because I requested a new password". Which, of course, I did not. Be very wary...

Is that what the kids are calling them now? Hi back at ya Pam!

I could have gone on for some time with my namesakes. There were 19,900,000 hits. A few years ago, my Experian file got merged with another Tom Armstrong who is EXACTLY one year younger than me and lives about 30 miles away, in the same county as me. He is a deadbeat dad with multiple judgements against him. That was fun.

It's pretty frightening, actually. You may not want to try it yourself. But here's what I learned. Apparantly you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a Tom Armstrong. There's a country singer I never heard of with a serious twang and bad hair. A cartoonist I HAVE heard of... There's a grad student scientist wannabe with a Unabomber kind of a look. There's an Engineering Professor whose web page looks like it was designed by an Engineering Professor. There's a composer of disturbing poetry. There's an aspiring artist. A prolific author. Editor of a kooky Zen website who writes strange short stories. And apparantly, someone is very concerned that all of us Tom Armstrongs are becoming Scientologists. Oh, and according to the link over to the right on the search page, Tom Armstrong is for sale at Ebay. I looked, but I couldn't find him. I, however, still have The Shirt.

Don't forget about MarkLA's turtle... The Lovely Mrs. Quixote and I had a Shih Tzu named Babaloo for 13 wonderful years. He shot rubber bands. When he first started doing it, neither of us saw him do it, we just kept getting hit with rubber bands and blaming it on each other. What a scream when we finally realized our pup was the one doing it...

Well I finally got hold of the IT guys. They sent the 'kill' command to my berry and deleted me from their server. I even wiped the berry. Did a complete reinstall of all the programs (no backup, a new install. The IT policy will not go away. We've gotten the t-mobile rep in a conference call and even the RIM guy. Nobody can figure it out. Each of them is sure it' the other company's fault, but that doens't sove it. I guess I gotta go buy a new berry. And probably no recourse, since the IT guys have at least made a decent try at fixing it. When I went through the 'wiping' process, it didn't give me the option to wipe the OS. Any idea how I get that to display? I upgraded to the newest version of 4.0 early on in this process and it didn't seem to help... What a pain.