Expert: Regan Shinski - 1/22/2011

Question
Hello, i have a question i have this issue with a collection account that is joint with my mother. She is the co signer, I live in arizona and i applied for an apartment in Colorado. The apartments where The grove at Greeley i talked to the manager and signed an aplication because thats all i needed to fill out. it looked like a contract but she ensured me it wasnt, so i signed it ant turned it in for an apartment. A few months passed and i had not received a call so i called, the manager told me i had an apartment and to be there by may to move in. I told her i could not move in because i had to way of getting there, a issue came up. She said ok. A few months passed and in october i had a call from a collection agency stating i owed $5500 because i failed to show up for the apartment, the creditor told me they had sent me a number of notices, calls and e mails but i never received them i even checked my fone records and had nothing the post office never mailed anything so i was confused. I called the apartment complex and the assistant manager helped me by signing and faxing a paper stating i never lived there or had a balance? So why did they place me in collections? Numerous times ive told the collectors i have no balance and the account was closed but i still have it present on my credit report, and its negative standing. I cant get car insurance, rent a apartment to live, or even buy a car. Im stuck here at home with my parents until its fixed, is there anything that can be done to fix this and have it removed from my credit report?

i have proof of residency from the time there claming i lived in colorado and proof that im in college. i even have a paper from the original company which where the apartment complex stating i never had a balance and my contract was terminated on there behalf.

Answer
Hi Ramon:

For repairing the credit, it is a job of credit repair.  Go to www.ficofighter.com for more information on this.

Whether or not you LEGALLY owe the amount is something entirely different.  This will depend on the paperwork and residency.  Obviously you personally have the residency issue taken care of, although they could say someone else was living there under your lease.  The key will be the papers that you signed.  Was it a lease?  A contract?  Obviously difficult for me to say at this point.  You may need an attorney if they pursue or really hold their ground.

On the issue of credit repair and getting it off your reports, you have some real options with credit repair at www.ficofighter.com.  You can try this yourself but you need to know that you can really mess this up if it is not done correctly.  You can re-start the statute of limitations, cause them to sue you, and kill your future efforts to get it off your credit reports.  This is why I strongly recommend you use the services at www.ficofighter.com in more complex cases like this.  However, an option to start is to file a dispute with the credit bureaus under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)and at the same time ask for debt validation under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) from the collection agency.  This are complex statutes (why I recommend you let www.ficofighter.com handle it) so it's impossible for me to write the whole letters for you in this forum but complete a search and look at those statutes if you want to risk doing it yourself.  Otherwise go to www.ficofighter.com and let us handle it for you.

Good luck in whatever path you choose.  Feel free to repost a question as you get more specific into your repair.

Regan

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