Notes, August 6, 2008 — Truman Boyes

Recently I received a copy of my credit report from our mortgage lender and although I have seen recent reports from all 3 bureaus in the past year or so, I did not pick up that a dentist whom I had refused to pay for services not rendered had tried to collect against one of my old addresses, which effectively showed up as a negative impact upon my credit worthiness. The dental firm had sent me an invoice a few years back for a type of X-Ray that they did not perform, which also happen to be a type that is not covered by my Insurance at the time, which prompted me to dispute the bill with the firm in writing and verbally. As they apathetically did nothing to resolve the issue it then was sent to a collection company which then attempted to collect from me at an old address of mine in the US. This annoyed me to no end, as the whole concept of credit reporting is sort of, “you are guilty until proven innocent”.

I have disputed inaccuracies with credit reports in the past, but now this issue takes it to another corner case because unlike simple revolving credit disputes, this is an invalid claim against an amount that I will not pay. So now I filed a formal dispute with Experian, which fortunately they offer online and the process is relatively painless. You simply request a current copy of your report, which is free, and then dispute the negative line item. The part that annoyed me is that the explanation field is only 120 characters and this is enforced by javascript; I wanted to explain the situation in enough detail to ensure that this will be removed from my report

Originally published on truman.net. See the archived copy.