Fico is posting fictitious late payments and collection tag after chap 13 discharge

[Pilgrim]

My chapter 13 case was discharged in June. I recently signed up for ScoreWatch with myFico.com. That product includes your Equifax score. I was curious about the other two scores so I ordered them too. My Experian score was about 80 points lower than the other two CRA's. That seemed strange since the same number of 'adverse' accounts were on EX as on EQ and TU.

In looking at the individual accounts in the EX Fico report I saw that each discharged account had been tagged as +90 late and had a CO (collection tag) posted for the last month in the payment history section.

Thinking that the Fico algorithm had a bug in it I called Fico. I was told by a supervisor a lot of contradictory information. In the end he pretty much stated that this is how Fico tags the account for their scoring.

I think something is amiss. I was never late on any of these accounts. I was under the understanding that a CRA could not post any derogatory information that occurred after filing for BK. Actually, the CRA's are not reporting it Fico is. What recourse does a consumer have? Fico will not do anything about this. The supervisor agreed that these recent CO tags were lowering my score.

I did notice that TU and EQ do not include the payment history. With no payment history there is no place to tag the account as CO. Maybe the solution is to have Experian not include payment history to myFico?

Rather than pursue a solution I will probably just wait the two years for the accounts to fall off my report. I'm not really looking for a credit card, house or car right now. Has anyone else noticed this with Fico?

Thanks!

[IBroke]

Hmm, I guess it would be interesting to obtain your EX report directly from Experian to see what's going on. In case you haven't used your free annual credit report yet, it wouldn't cost you anything.

I've seen so many errors and "misinterpretations" from third parties (after all, that's what myFICO is as well) that I only rely on the source when doing research.

If you were current until you filed, +90 days late-notations shouldn't and mustn't be on any of your reports - and that's why you would need your "original" Experian-report. If Experian follows the law and FICO thinks they can simply "tag" the information to lower your score, they might have a problem.

I'm curious though how a credit report obtained by a lender would look like in such a case. Although they use a FICO scoring-model, they obtain the report from the credit-bureau and not from myFICO. Legally, I don't know exactly what and if anything could be done IF Experian has it right and only myFICO wrong since myFICO is neither a creditor nor a credit reporting agency so I don't know how the FCRA can apply.

[Pjmax]

You need to get your 3 full reports from annualcreditreport.com (annual freebies) or from each individual CRA. MyFico reports are 3rd-party reports. All 3rd party reports get the info from the CRAs, but interpret it in their own way, and do no include the full info, for example, usually only show 2 yrs. payment history, instead of 7 on the full reports from the CRAs. Scorewatch is fine for monitoring, but if something doesn't look right, go to the source and check.

Transunion and Equifax pretty much 'scrub' payment history, Experian does not. It's not unusual for Experian scores to be lower, because of this. When you get your reports, if there is incorrect info, dispute it with each CRA that is reporting incorrectly.

[Pilgrim]

Thanks for the comments IBroke. I did get my credit report from EX. There is a link on myFico to contest what is in your report. I did try that first before calling myFico. That's when I saw that EX was reporting all my discharged accounts as Discharged in Chapter 13 Bankruptcy / Never Late.

I think the Fico tags only effect the EX Fico score. I agree with you that if someone pulls my EX report it will come from the CRA. In case you are interested my scores are EX 608, EQ 686, TU 675.

[Pilgrim]

Thanks Pjmax. I agree with you completely and have gotten my reports yearly through annualcreditreport.com. I have no disputes with the content of any of the reports from the three CRA's. My beef is with the Fico practice of adding false late payments and collection tags to discharged accounts. Even if the creditors charged off accounts or considered payments late after I filed BK I would expect that derogatory information to appear back in 2008 and not on the month I discharged in 2013.

Thanks again. Your comments are valuable for all to see and heed.