Good Riddance, Bad Data: Sallie Mae

Do you have student loans with Sallie Mae? Are you on a graduated repayment plan? Check your FICO score. Sallie Mae’s been reporting some bad data:

Lender’s Goof Slams Credit Scores

I love the language MSN uses to downplay this – a “goof,” they call this. I call it lazy and inexcusable. As long as bad data makes it way into your life, and you’re the one left to clean it up (yes, Sallie Mae is “fixing it,” but how long will it take to really be fixed with the credit reporting agencies?), it’s inexcusable.

I admit I’m not a big fan of Sallie Mae anyway. My student loans, with a fantastic lender and manager, were sold to Sallie Mae last year. Since then, I’ve gotten a storm of email spam that I can’t unsubscribe from because, as Sallie Mae as told me, “It’s all one list.” If I unsubscribe from their email updates, I don’t get email updates about my account. With the account update email I must take the twice-or-more weekly spam. Hate Sallie Mae. Dead to me.

I also learned that I don’t qualify for any Bush Bucks. I knew he hated me this whole time, and now I have proof.

Good Riddance, Bad Data: AT&T

This is the first post in a series about my experiences dealing with bad data. I have become increasingly frustrated with the data contained in credit reports, which informs our FICO scores. Why? Because you and I are not told the source of this data about us (if the credit reporting agencies even know it) but bear sole responsibility for correcting it. Entities who provide data don’t have to identify their sources or verify information: The onus is on you and I to disprove them.

Cases in point for me include:

• Proving I’ve never been married, twice (neither to a female roommate nor to my father)
• Proving I didn’t open an AT&T account that I… well, didn’t open
• Proving my live-in boyfriend’s undergraduate loans, which he took out long before he met me, were not my responsibility
• Proving the amount I owed on student loans was half what was reported (each loan I had was listed twice)

My grand theory, which these posts will explore, is that data quality may be getting worse.  In my experience, the word is getting around about this and, because of lower data quality, some people and organizations are increasingly skeptical of said data and thus assigning lower weight to it.

If you’re interested in the topic of data about you, I highly recommend Jim Harper’s book called Identity Crisis, particularly for its descriptions of data piggybacking and the persistence of bad data. I also recommend The Digital Person by Daniel J. Solove. Do you know the digital you?

Now for the post!  Long text ahead!

Good Riddance, Bad Data: AT&T

Preface: I have never, ever had AT&T phone service of any kind in my name. Keep this information nugget in your pocket.

In 2001, I moved to Chicago and rented an apartment. I checked my credit report and found it had a ding on it for a 30-day overdue AT&T account.  This didn’t prevent me from getting the apartment, but of course I called AT&T about it.

I told AT&T that I had never had an AT&T account. They insisted I did. I asked them to provide details about the account, you know, foolish questions like:

• What kind of service was this for?
• Was the account currently open or closed?
• When had I supposedly signed up for it?
• To what address was the service connected? (I didn’t have a cell phone yet).
• What was the phone number on the account?
• Where was the contract or service agreement in my name?

But how dare I, really?  AT&T refused to answer all of these questions, and could produce no evidence that I had ever opened an account with them. They said they were not obligated to provide that information – though of course I was still obligated to pay them.

AT&T would only say that the account had been opened in January 2001 (which was also on my credit report). I pointed out that my credit report also said that the account was only 30 days late. Clearly, I must have been paying them for most of 2001, if the account was only 30 days overdue since January, and not 90 days or more.  Surely, then, I must have paid them something at some point.  Could they please provide me with evidence that I had paid them?

Of course they couldn’t.  I had never written a check to AT&T (no online payment yet, either – it was 2001 remember), which was easy to prove with a run through my bank records, which I sent.  Did this change anything?  Of course not.

Naturally, I refused to pay the balance of $180.  AT&T punted the account to NCO Financial Systems for collection, where it was conveniently not their problem anymore.  The collection stayed on my credit report for a couple of years and I did absolutely nothing about it.  It wasn’t bad: After all, since I didn’t have a phone number with AT&T, it’s not like NCO knew where to call me.  I could not stand dealing with the pure irrationality and unfairness of the situation.

Think about this for a moment.  A perfect stranger walks up to you on the street and says “You owe me money.”  You’ve never seen the person before and have no prior relationship with them.  Assuming you have no abandoned children who might have found you, would you just pay this person whatever s/he asked?  Of course not.

Life went on unaffected.  I got cell phones, credit cards, and more with great rates and no problems.

In the meantime, incredibly enough, NCO Financial Systems started calling my dad, with whom I’d not lived for seven years at the time.  They insisted that the $180 AT&T balance was his and he had to pay it. Now, my dad and I have very similar names – different by one letter at the end of my name to make it girly. Still, how did this account end up on his credit report, under a completely different social security number?

My father, of the 800+ credit score and Max Midwestern frugality, was shocked and awed, mostly because it was all magical: My parents hadn’t had AT&T service in about a decade – and certainly no account opened in January 2001. My dad then lost several hours of his life having the same arguments with NCO and AT&T that I did – asking for proof of an account, for proof of any payment ever being made on said account – and NCO and AT&T refused to provide it.

My dad, in his proud 6′4″ factory-worker, Midwestern gun-owner way, made it equally clear that he had no responsibility to pay, wasn’t moving or buying a home soon, and didn’t care if it sat on his credit report until the day he died.

I found out about the magical account move accidentally. While visiting my dad, I heard a voicemail message from NCO, the collection agency. My dad proceeded to tell me the story, and I told him about my situation with the same account.  We ordered credit reports online immediately. Sure enough, the $180 AT&T balance was now on his credit report, not on mine.

And so the account remained off of my credit report and on my dad’s for a few years. I have the credit report from when I purchased my first condo in 2004, and my second condo in September 2006. It’s not on either report. It’s also not on my free annual credit reports from February 2006, 2007, or 2008.

But guess what? It’s baaaaack.

I applied for a credit card yesterday with my credit union.  They said “We’ll approve it as soon as you clear up this delinquent account.”

I promptly felt panicked and surpised.  What delinquent account could this be?! I checked the PDF of my annual credit report from two months ago.  Not a single delinquency on it.  Maybe a mortgage payment didn’t get acknowledged?!  Then the guy tells me…

“It’s an AT&T account from 2001 for $180.”

Oh. My. God.  WHAT THE EVER LIVING HELL?  I mean REALLY.

In my Exhausted Modern Consumer voice, I told him the story. I offer to send reams of credit reports, both with the account on it in 2001 and after it was removed. And then, thinking of the whole draining seven years past, I said, “You know what, I’m tired of dealing with this. I don’t need the credit card. Sorry about this.”

But what did he say? “Oh, don’t worry about it. I consider that clearing up the delinquency by providing us with an explanation.”

My only guess this time around is the magical account may have reappeared because the “delinquency” will disappear after this year, since it was reported in 2001 and seven years will have passed.

Walk with me down the path o’ paranoia for a moment, though, to consider this possibility: Assume that many consumers don’t do what my dad and I did, which is to not pay.  Assume that many people (like my grandparents or my mom) would have just paid the damned thing to get it off of their credit reports.  Assume that AT&T knows this, and can do it on person.  Think of how much money they make if they do this to 10,000 or 100,000 people, and even some of them pay the balance.

Good riddance to bad data.  I think we’d all save a lot of money.