Unique situation... Help me understand my rights please...

[patrick1978]

Ok heres the situation...

I was recently applying for a bunch of 0% offers and recieved a letter from one of them that claimed i was denied due to "one or more accounts showing delinquency for 90+ days"...

I was fairly shocked at this since I have never been denied any credit in the past, but i hadnt really applied for anything major in the last 2 years and thought my credit was fairly impecable up to this instance...

I immediately knew the situation in which the delincuency happened but was assured by the CSR's that it would not reflect on my credit report due to the circumstances involved.

So here's the story... I have an MBNA Platinum Georgia Tech Alumni Card with a current limit of 15k... About 2 years ago i moved from Georgia to California. Before the move i made sure to pay off all my balances (which i tended to do regularly anyway) and updated my address with all of my credit cards (Discover, AMEX, and MBNA were the only ones at the time).

I used Discover almost exclusively during this period and it wasn't too uncommon for me to have no activity at all on my MBNA and as such they rarely sent me statements anyway. So i didnt think anything about not recieving MBNA statements for a long period because I wasn't using it and thought my balance was completely paid off. Three months later I went to pay for gas with the MBNA card (was going to use the card exclusively for a roadtrip) and realized it had expired.

As soon as i got home i called them up to figure out why I hadn't recieved a new card and was promplty told that my account was in delinquency!!! Of course i was very shocked at this.

It turns out they had my address completely wrong in their sytem. It wasn't even close to my actual address and nothing close to anything i'd ever heard of. The only thing they had right was the new state (CA). I asked the balance (thinking maybe i was a victim of fraud and he said $108... didnt sound like major fraud activity to me... It turns out I had some small charge credited earlier but i never recieved statements because they were sending em off into la-la land.. Late fees and finance charges all accumulated up to 108 bucks... I immediately reconciled the balance over the phone because the money wasnt a problem for me and i wanted to make sure the account reverted back into a non delinquint state... I now realize doing that was probably my biggest mistake. I reported the old card lost (since i never recieved it and it went to some random address) and requested a replacement, and the CSR assured me that the late payments were through no fault of my own and should not affect my credit score.

Yesterday i was denied a credit card... got my free credit report and low and behold the original account was shown as delinquent from Sept, Oct, and Nov of 2002 and shows as closed by consumer 12/02 with a delinquency of 90 days for a balance of $0. Experian reports this as 60 days delinquint for 10/2002 and 11/2002. last updated 12/2002

Then on top of that the new account (to replace the lost one) has all the exact same info as the old account with same opening date (10/17), same credit limit (15k), but a new account number. For some reason the payment data ALSO reflects the delinquent time but says it was delinquent for Oct, Nov, Dec of 2002 for 90 days for a balance of $0. But that account wasnt even ACTIVE until 12/2002 after it replaced the old card. This is reported the on Experian as lat on 9/2002, 10/2002, and 11/2002. entry last updated 6/2003 but was verified 8/2004 when i previously disputed with experian.

I wrote a letter to dispute this to MBNA yesterday as well as placed two phone calls to their CSR's which basically just said write a letter, sympathized with the story a bit, and then said i should here from there investigations department within 7-10 days. I am hoping for positive news back and maybe a goodwill adjustment.

Does anyone have any advice or experience with this sort of thing? First i think its wrong that my credit report reflects delinquency in the first place because for the time of delinquency technically the account wasn't even mine ie it was registered to some random address and i was never sent statements. Is this a violation of the FCBA in requiring them to communicate period statements to me? What is the recourse for a wrong address in their files?

And at the very least there certainly shouldnt be TWO accounts in delinquency. The second account wasn't even active until AFTER the original one was reconciled and closed out as a lost card...

Another question i have is that the first case with the closed account, it says estimated date of removal: 11/2009 which would be the last statement of delinquency that went to la-la land. The second entry with the current account i have say estimated date of removal 4/2010?!? where does that number come from? Shouldnt both of these have estimated removals of 9/2009... 7 years from 9/2002 when the first delinquency occured?

any advice is welcome and sorry for the long post.

edit: oh i forgot to add... It seems they also pulled my credit report right around this same period. There is an MBNA hard inquiry on 1/02/2003... Is there any way to figure out why they pulled my report at this time? and what srt of thing would constitute a permisable purpose?

[Guest jeeptravel]

Permissible purpose=soft pull=No effect or impact on Credit Score.

If you were late, that is something that can affect your score and a banks decision to not take you on as a customer.

If you were never late, and your credit reports read you were, then you need to dispute the late by one of many ways.

If the wrong info was used in the banks decision you can write them a "GoodWill letter" explaining the item is in dispute. They may choose to accept you as a customer once receiving the letter.

Finally, if after the dispute, the CRA amends the report to not include the late notation, ask them to notify the bank who rejectd you as a result of their false reporting.

You have a good chance of getting the card/account if thislatter situation is the case.

jt