bruiseviolet

Long story short, have an old judgement, that while it isn't showing on my credit reports, shows up as public record when the mortgage company pulled my credit. I have to get it paid/settled/removed in order for them to approve my mortgage loan. How can I best protect my assets while I try and settle with them? So far I have been able to fly under their radar as I am self employed, have a different bank account and don't have any auto loans. I know since the judgement they have tried to get information in court from companies I have done contract work for, so I know they are diligently trying to garnish wages from me. How can I protect my bank account while I am in contact with them to settle the judgement and get it taken care of?

I am literally at the end of my rope =( I have been repairing my credit for 1.5 years now. I started with 540 average FICO- and now am around 570 FICO. Blah. I have gotten as much as I possibly can off my reports. I've spent so much money on certified mail etc.... I've gotten 1 of 2 judgements gone. I've gotten rid of over 1/2 my medical collections (some CRA's showed 30+ accounts in collections and now only show 3). I haven't had a late payment on a loan since 2007. I went out and purchased a "new" car (because my old car died) at an ungodly interest rate and payment in early May- still no "positive" on my credit. (automatic payments so NEVER is late). Have been self employed for 4 years now. Since December of last year my income from the self employment has more than quadroupled. Had a heck of a time finding a car dealer who would approve me with my bad fico- let alone base it off what I could prove as current self employment income and NOT just base it off last two years of 1040's which are SIGNIFICANTLY lower than what I have been making (and will continue to make). We weren't planning on another child until after we got a house- however things don't always go as planned. =) So we are scrambling to find a bigger place- because right now- in order to save money for a downpayment- we've been living with us (2 adults) and our 3 kids in a 3 bedroom, 1,000 sq ft apartment way out in the middle of nowhere. There is no way we can fit another child in here =( I am so frustrated. We have the income- MORE than enough monthly income to a mortgage. We both have LOW BAD HORRIBLE FICO scores. We BOTH have been cleaning up our credit for over 1.5 years now with very little positive change in our scores. Renting anywhere with the bedrooms we need (and we are being modest- just 4 bedrooms and a little more sq footage and a yard for our kids to play in) is in excess of $2200 a month. (to put it in perspective my sister and husband own a 2,000+ sq home in the area and pay $850 a month for mortgage/insurance). I made a HUGE mistake car shopping- and thought that it was like mortgage shopping- 2 week period = 1 ding. Well I learned the hard way- auto loans aren't the same- and now I am showing 30 (yes THIRTY) hard inquiries on my score in the past 2 years. OMG =( We thought a mobile home would be the way to go- since we basically were completely LAUGHED at by every mortgage lender/broker we spoke with over our credit scores. Either that- or they wanted $30,000 down on a $90,000 house. So back to the mobile home thing- we got the same problem, any less than a 700 score means we would need to pay 35-45% down payment- which average mobile home size we needed came out to around $40k - $53k... so that put us back around $15k - $25k downpayment because our SCORE was under 700. Now if I had $15k-$25k to put down on a MOBILE home- why the heck wouldn't I just go get a mortgage on a real home since we need that much as well? UGH makes no sense. I am so frustrated that over a darn 3 digit score- 2/3 of our income is going to RENT a dang house- when we could have OUR OWN HOME with a payment of less than 1/3 of our monthly income- but because of a stupid FICO score we can't. That and the fact it costs money to get your fico- there's no simple easy way to get it- it's all pay XXXX and we'll give you ONE of your fico scores.. blah blah... and we won't tell you how they are determined etc... even if you follow all teh credit repair stuff- your score still is going to be way low. Sorry for the rant- i just feel even more underwater than I was 1.5 years ago =( Let me also state- the reason my credit was(is) in such disrepair is because I was a single mother for 7 years, and never received a DIME of child support. I worked full time- paid for daycare and school and completely supported my family all on my own- which entailed having to pay our rent and bills with credit cards which got maxed out and then when I lost my job- went by the wayside- resulting in an eviction- judgements- tons of MEDICAL bills from no insurance and a severe deep depression for myself. In the past 6 years I have met a new man, gotten married, am no longer depressed, working hard and making decent money and have had more children- however I am STILL haunted by those choices I made 6+ years ago and that is what is frustrating to me! I feel like I can't get on with my life and provide for my family like I want to- because of all that crap from when I was "a completely different person in a completely different life situation". =(

Let me share this about CBCS-- fiance and I had seriously 45+ medical collections- about 8-10 of them where from CBCS. All we had to do was send the pre-HIPAA letter- and EVERY SINGLE ONE was deleted was ALL THREE REports- from CBCS- only ones that came immediately off all three reports- nothing with them that we've ever 'disputed' has ever been verified- it's always just deleted... =)

nevermind- it's EXPERIAN not EQ. sorry, typed the wrong name.

ahh, but it's been deleted off my CRA's already- so basically at this point- I kind of don't really care what their letter says- it's not being reported anymore- CRA sent me a letter saying it was deleted. LOL

The ONLY time I ever disputed anything- was old addresses over the phone when the CRA's wouldn't delete them online. That's it! I wasn't "making my own letters" or amending them- all I did was move around wording in the PRE-HIPAA letter, so I could have it make sense to list ALL of the collection accounts I was disputing- so I didn't have to write 40+ separate letters in handwriting to each CRA. It was ONE sentence- I just changed it to say this, "From my report #XXXXXXX from DATE, I have no knowledge of the following accounts:" and that is all I "re-arranged". As far as any letter- I have NEVER EVER EVER signed my signature on ANYTHING since I have started doing these. I can assure you- that is not something I have done. I have the copies sitting here of the letters I sent to the CA's- and my name is TYPED.. not signed- no handwriting of mine- everything was typed, even the envelopes I sent them in.

I have not been able to log into mine for MONTHS- it ALWAYS comes up with this error. FRUSTRATING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sent a pre-hipaa letter and one of my medical collections was Deleted. However about 2 weeks ago I received a letter in the mail from the CA- stating that they received notice I was disputing the account- and to please contact them and send them documents to show I am a victim or identity theft or else send them documents showing the original hospital bill. (lol basically they wanted me to prove it?) Anyways- Do I need to do anything else? It's been deleted from all 3 CRA's- so do I just ignore the letter the CA sent me? I'm assuming I do....

Is this something new? When I checked Experian tonight- I was checking on status of some pre-hipaa letters I sent. This time they all came back verified (sigh- but the battles not over yet LOL). However, I noticed when I sent my first round (last september) any that came back verified just said - verified from your dispute sepetember 2011. Now it shows a legend next to the ones I recently disuputed. It shows a RED "C" for collection- on the date it was originally placed for collections/reported- then every month shows a black "ND" for "No Data"- but then the month they processed the Dispute (Feb 2012) they all have a Red "C" box for that month showing "collection" and the status now shows, 'account updated to reflect results of investigation of dispute". Does this mean anything or are they just showing a new way of doing this? Just odd- last time it didn't "update" the dates when I disputed- and this time it did.... edit to add screen shot:

Is this something new? When checking on my pre-hipaa letter progress, I noticed that Equifax now shows this (see below) on all of the accounts that came back as 'verified'- aside from student loans, I've never seen anything like this on them before- is this something new they are doing now? ayment history legend OK Current/Terms of agreement met30 Account 30 days past due60 Account 60 days past due90 Account 90 days past due120 Account 120 days past due150 Account 150 days past due180 Account 180 days past dueCRD Creditor received deedFS Foreclosure proceedings startedF ForeclosedVS Voluntarily surrenderedR RepossessionPBC Paid by creditorIC Insurance claimG Claim filed with governmentD Defaulted on contractC CollectionCO Charge offCLS ClosedND No data for this time period Payment History:

I just need some encouragement. I am feeling so overwhelmed tonight. There has been a lot going on with family, and I needed to take a good 2 weeks break from credit repair to help my aunt and her family get moved out of their house. During this time, I received a bunch of letters in the mail, about items I am doing the HIPPAA process on. Now mind you, I started with over 34 medical collections- and that's not including all of my husbands. I've got letters from all over the place. I'm so glad I have made a spread sheet to track stuff.. LOL Just hard to "jump back in" but I know I need to. The clock is ticking quickly for us to buy a house- I've been working on this for over a year, and so far have only managed ONE score out of our 6 to get over a 640. Somedays I just feel like I'm treading water and not getting any closer to dry land. *sigh*

I did mine separate- but only because of my timing. I started first with DV's for regular collection accounts- because I was in a place in life I could handle it. HIPAA was over my head, and I wanted to get a grasp on the basics first. Didn't take long between DV's and GW's, and PFD's (funny story on those at the bottom) that most of them were deleted. In October I felt I knew enough and had enough personal time, to sit down and tackle my medical. I started with something like 34+ medical collection tradelines- so as you can see it was super daunting. Here is what I did. Also- some say to send DV's etc all CM- I never sent any of them certified- just always used regular mail- you can always add delivery confirmation or whatever- but don't see any need to send CM- So to tackle Medical. (1) I had already opted out at the beginning of my credit cleaning journey- (last March). So that was out of the way. (2) I had also disputed all of my old addresses/incorrect name spellings/incorrect address variations. basically, if it didn't match my Name and Address as is printed on my Drivers License- I disputed it. I got almost all of those taken off (just disputed online). (3) Before I started HIPAA letters- I wanted to get ALL of those old addresses off- when I did online disputes, I was told they couldn't because they were connected to trade lines. I just picked up the phone and called the CRA's and did it over the phone with a customer service rep. Two of them just deleted no problem- I just kept stating, "I don't live at that address" or "That's not my legal name". The third one, was giving me a hard time- saying because it was connected to two tradelines she couldn't delete it. I gave her a line about how it's their job to report ACCURATE information- and if I am saying the Name/Address are INACCURATE- then the TRADELINE must be inaccurate- and they need to remove both. I won that argument and they were deleted. (4) Got my legal pad out- printed out a copy of WhyChat's HIPAA process- printed out the Pre-HIPAA letter. And got started. I did use yellow legal notepad paper to write on- however I just used black and blue ink. I used to work for a large database company- who scanned and stored legal documents for large law firms and corporations and one of my duties was to use the OCR Scanner and scan the documents. While it's easier to just get the green pen and write- I didn't have a green pen, and wanted to get writing. From my experience, I knew that the machines have a great capability of deciphering handwriting- even cursive. However, where it has problems, is if your cursive is really really swirling and letters overlap and it can't tell the difference between one letter to the next- and the letter sizes should all be relative the same size (ie- if the line of a p hangs down- it will know it's probably a "P" etc..) So basically, I had fun with my handwriting/cursive and made my paper somewhat legible to the human eye, but made a point to make almost all of my letters connect. I really should scan a sample and post it on here- because I don't know that I am explaining it clearly. (5) I changed part of the wording- So my letters started with: My name is Bruise Violet, my social security number is #XXX XX XXXXX. Per my report #XXXXXXXXX from "Month", X, YEAR, I have no knowledge of the following accounts: • COLLECTION AGENCY NAME (as appeared on my report- if it was showing half a name/word I just wrote that-) #XXXXXX •COLLECTION AGENCY NAME #XXXXXXXXX •ANOTHER COLLECTION AGENCY NAME #XXXXXXXXXXXXXX etc... etc.. etc... And I listed out every single medical account appearing on that credit report. Then I finished the letter as per the instructions. (6) I sent letters certified mail- I actually had two letters in each envelope- because my husband did his as well- and I just combined them for shipping in the same envelope. (7) As you can see from my signature- most of them were deleted. During this time, I had more medical collections show up, so I had to send another round of letters out. I'm still working through the next part- have a couple different things going on- but I do feel like I have a decent grasp of the general idea. My advice is to read the HIPAA process 5 or 6 times. Make sure you understand what and why you are doing what you are doing. It will make it 100 times easier to implement it. it took me reading it a good 5-6 times for it all to realyl sink in and make sense of how it was all connected and the "bigger picture" of the process. --- If I were in your position- might as well save a stamp/shipping costs- just throw all the letters into the same envelope and mail away!

It is next to useless to do any kind of dispute on line or by phone. Send a letter, ( hand written preferably) stating that the following addresses on your report # xxxxx are incorrect and you are concerned about ID theft/fraud. Include a COPY of your drivers license, a COPY of your SS card and an ORIGINAL recent utility bill as proof of your current correct address. MAKE SURE YOU OPT OUT BEFORE DISPUTING ADDRESSES http://www.whychat.5...OPTOUTINST.HTML While I believe your method will work, It is not true that it is "next to useless to do any kind of dispute on line or by phone". I had 100% success disputing wrong spellings of my name, wrong and similar addresses and even old addresses tied to trade lines off my credit report. ALL I DID- was dispute online- and the ones connected to tradelines that they wouldn't process online- I called and they were all immediately removed.

Background Info: -opted out, deleted all addresses, sent PRE-HIPAA letters to CRA's - in "special font and paper" -Most of them were deleted- except for this one collection agency- which none were deleted from Equifax report (even though Ex & TU Deleted them- we're talking 10 tradelines) Per WhyChat's Instructions (Because there had been no relationship established- just a letter with acct numbers from Equifax saying "verified")- I sent this letter to the CA with all of the different account numbers appearing on my credit report.. After I received confirmation of Delivery- I then sent this letter to Equifax (again, per Whychat's recommendation). The letter sent to Equifax was only delivered yesterday- however today in the mail I received a reply from the Collection Agency that I sent that first letter to for the various accounts. A couple of things, (1) Some of them are for services for my children- which I thought had insurance that should have covered it- ?? I guess my bigger question is this- they def. proved a relationship between me and the OC (a hospital)- I was expecting a nice little form letter with account number, balance, my name, date of services etc.. However, the women sent me back a separate letter for each Collection Account- and then another attached paper that goes into detail about EVERYTHING from the hospital visits- listing in detail things like: Urine Pregnancy Test Lab Work How many milligrams of a prescription was given Details on every account what was Diagnosed at each visit Is this "normal" from what others of you have seen? Such blatant HIPAA violations- I feel SO VIOLATED! LOL Suzie Smith at the local collection agency, now knows all of this personal information about emergency room visits for myself and 2 of my 3 children. Yippeee! I realize through the WhyChat HIPAA process- that once you pay the OC- if the CA doesn't remove them then you can get them into more trouble- but doesn't them providing this information- whether the OC is paid or not- still completely violate my patient rights? Do I have to wait until after the OC is paid and if the CA doesn't remove before I can do anything for HIPAA violations? Or is this something I could pursue at the same time? Also- I have NO IDEA if this has any significance but on a few of the "printouts from the hospital" there are two different ones they sent. Each account number only has 1 associated print-out but there are two different print outs given. Print-out #1) Is the big Violator- the form that lists everything they prescribed, injected, xrays, how many puffs of an inhaler, etc... It looks like this: •3-5-07 RX-DRUGNAME TAB XXX MG $5.26 •3-5-07 RX-DRUGNAME TAB XXX MG $5.26 •3-5-07 RX-DRUGNAME XXMG 1 Puff $89.48 •3-5-07 ER-VISIT CATEGORY X $455.78 •8-20-07 bad debt sent to agency $555.78 then at the bottom it says: Remit Payment to: OC - 123 Main Street - Overpriced Town, USA Beginning Balance $0.00 New Charges/Adjustments $555.78 New Payments/Credits $555.78- Current Account Balance $0.00 than it gives the account reps name for the CA to contact if they have any questions. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Print-out#2) Has the date printed from the hospital at the top- and it's recent- so I am assuming the CA called the OC to have them print this information and send to them? •It tells date of service •Who service was for •Shows SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER (GRRRRRRRRRR I have HUGE issues with that) •Tells what services were provided/medicine given and the cost (like the first letter) •On the ones for my children- it even lists their insurance and thePolicy Number (Have no clue why insurance didnt cover? their insurance covers everything...) Then at the bottom it lists the balance and shows it "zerod" out and then says.. DA/T/E "COLLECTION AGENCY NAME" WRITE OFF #XXXXXXXXXX I don't understand this one- because nowhere does it show anything but ZEROS for Balance, Total Due, etc... It shows something about, "Lst chg XXXXXX $194.00 and then across from that says Last ins pay XXXXXX $64.89 Then in another spot is shows a "Total $XXX.XX (which doesnt make the difference between LST CHG & LAST INS PAY- nor does it add up to the totals of lines LST CHG & LAST INS PAY- so no clue where this number is coming from).

ONLY the INITIAL dispute letter is done in "funny font" ALL other correspondence to anyone, including the CRAs is properly typed and "courtroom ready". The follow up dispute to the CRAs ( after the medical DV is sent to the CAs) is sent as soon as you have proof of receipt of the medical DV by the CA. Ok thank you so much. I received proof of receipt on the Medical CA's Friday- so I will get the letters ready and mail them out to the CRA's tomorrow.