Creditor sent Bill to wrong address and I was not notified

Question

I signed up for a line of credit through a store, and ended up being approved. What I didn't know was there was a fee associated with opening up the card which was charged to the card.

After 3 months I had a change on my credit report citing a delinquent account. I called the creditor and told them they had not sent me any notification of owing money and that I took a huge hit on my credit. The creditor acknowledged they had been sending the bill to the wrong address but did not rescind the hit on my credit.

I am 22 and had perfect payment history which has now been tarnished. I got my first Credit Card at 18, so I have 4, going on 5 years of perfect on time payments before this event. I dropped from a 760 credit score to a 650. How can I go about getting this resolved since I was not notified of the payment being owed.

Answer 1

It may be a fight. This article discusses a similar issue. The recourse may center around proving that the lender violated the Fair Credit Billing Act by sending things to the wrong address. You'd want to get your credit reports to show the effects of what happened, and could look into hiring a consumer law attorney to come to bat for you.

Having said that, though, if you knew that there was a charge for opening the account, then I'd have been looking for the bill to come within a couple of weeks. If it didn't, I'd get on the horn with them and find out why.

In fact, I recently made a charge to my oldest credit card (I think it's nearly 30 years old!) to keep it active. I hadn't received a bill in a few weeks, so I called up the number on the card to find out about it. It was a little contorted how I had to pay the bill, but I did.

Or another example: If I fail to get my water bill from the county, for whatever reason, it still needs to be paid on time. Whether the post office loses it, or whether they just decide they have it in for me and delete my bill, I still owe it.

I've been through enough disputes and the like to know that, even if the other guy screws up, it's still my responsibility to know what should be happening with my finances.

So, anyway, I hope you catch a break, and with time your credit rating will improve naturally even with the mark on your record if you're otherwise an exemplary credit risk.

Answer 2

Contact the three credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. Here are addresses: https://www.thebalance.com/who-are-the-three-major-credit-bureaus-960416 You have a legal right to dispute inaccurate information in your credit report. If the creditor does not concede that you are right, you can have a note put in your file about the disagreement that is supposed to show up whenever anyone pulls your credit report.

I wouldn't panic over this. The exact formulas are secret, but now that you've paid, it's not an unpaid bill but a late bill, and one late bill shouldn't hurt your credit rating for very long.