They collect more than just credit information about you
I just came across a great article written by Consumer Reports. It talked about information other than credit data that is gathered by other agencies about you. For example, insurance claims that you have made are collected by a company called ChoicePoint. Insurance companies use this information when creating quotes for your home and auto insurance. You have a right to see what is in your file. Go to www.choicetrust.com to obtain your ChoicePoint file. This report is subjected to the

An ounce of fraud prevention.....
My cousin, Aubrey Tobin, is a lawyer. He recently sent me the following email regarding tips as to how to avoid being a victim of identity theft. I thought it was worth passing on to you. He said: Read this and make a copy for your files in case you need to refer to it someday. Maybe we should all take some of his advice! A corporate Attorney sent the following out to the employees in his company. 1. Do not sign the back of your credit cards. Instead, put "PHOTO ID REQUIRED" or "SEE ID." 2. When you are writing checks to pay on your credit card accounts, DO NOT put the complete

When a "reasonable" reinvestigation is unreasonable under the Fair Credit Reporting Act
Being the conscientious person you are, you have decided to pull your credit report at www.annualcreditreport.com and you noticed that there is a trade line that does not belong to you. So what do you do? You go on line with the credit reporting agency and posit a dispute to that item. Because you are follower of my blog, you know that under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, that the credit reporting agency has 30 short days within which to conduct a reasonable reinvestigation into that item. During that 30 day period, if the agency is unable to verify that item, it must remove that item. No problem, right? WRONG!

Beware...that trade in can destroy your good credit
An article recently appeared in the Detroit Free Press about a couple who trade in their recreational vehicle with what they thought was a sound dealer. Indeed, Walt Michal's RV has been around for a long time, dealing in RVs. When the happy couple trade in their old RV that had a lien on it from the prior lender, for a new RV, they counted on the Walt Michals to pay off the loan balance of about $180,000. That did not happen. Walt Michals went out of business without paying off the lien on the old RV and now the couple is on the hook for the old loan and the new loan. This has been financially de

COLLECTORS - Get your demand letters reviewed before they turn into big problems
I have had the displeasure of suing a collection agent and agency that I had done work for a number of years ago. Why? The agency (which is owned by the agent) sent out a bad check demand letter to client that did not contain all of the requirements of MCL 600.2952. This statute requires that bad check demand letters have certain information contained in them. Because this agency did not comply with this statute, his bad check demand letter necessarily failed to comply with the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. While he made what appeared to be a good faith attempt to comply with the FDCPA, it was not good enou