Unpaid electric bill mishap and credit report question

 Hi. Every month, I have my electric bill (I live in Michigan; my
electricity provider is DTE) emailed to me.  I usually pay the bill
online when I get email that it's ready to be paid.  Unfortunately my
emailed bills got tagged as spam for 3 months, and I didn't realize it.
As a result, I didn't pay my electric bill for 3 months.  I got a "last
resort" paper bill from DTE (and a disconnection notice!!) last week,
and I promptly paid the bill.

But that isn't the problem.  The problem is this: Because of the unpaid
bills, I'm almost sure that DTE has put some bad information on my
credit report. This is really upsetting to me, because until now, my
credit report was perfect, and was my bargaining chip for lots of
things. I have a 13-year credit history with a score in the high 700's.

What can I do to reverse this?  Who do I talk to in order to explain
that it was a total mishap?  To whom do I explain that my email is
fixed, and that it'll never happen again?  Do I talk to the credit
bureau?  (Which one?)  Do I talk to DTE?  Do I talk to the 3rd party
company that handles the ebilling, MyCheckFree?

It's all such a mess now, and I don't want to be on the phone for 3
hours with mean people. Please help.


Thanks,
Roger Carlson

  Roger Carlson wrote:

   First, check your credit report to see if it is there. If it is
contact the company to explain what happened and ask then to retract the
report. If that fails then contact the credit bureau. By law they must
include you explanation in the report.
   My guess is that it was not reported. In the 80's when phone costs
were still high I worked at home and huge phone bills. I often made
partial/late payments and got warning notices. I was never disconnected
and nothing was on my report.

--
   To reply via e-mail please delete 1 c from paccbell

 
George Grapman wrote:

They were just goosing you.  

W : )

 On Mon, 10 Apr 2006 22:19:23 GMT, George Grapman


For practical purposes, that isn't true.  The FICO credit score is all
that really matters.  And your explanation won't have any impact at
all on your FICO credit score.

Credit bureaus and FICO are like a court.  They judge whether people
have good or bad credit, by taking into account everything everyone
says to them.   But they take into account what the creditors say a
lot more than what the debtors say.  In other words, they're a biased
court.  They don't have the same legal constraints as most courts, so
it's perfectly legal for them to be heavily biased.  They generally
take the word of the creditors without question, and almost
automatically reject whatever the debtors say.

A big part of our freedom depends on having unbiased courts.  The
credit court is one of our most important, for practical purposes, as
it can determine what class you're in, such as middle class, etc.
Therefore a huge chunk of our freedom has, for practical purposes,
been taken away by our credit system.

People who are unwilling to defend their freedom don't deserve it
anyway.  If the American people weren't such docile sheep, the credit
bureaus and FICO would have been sued successfully so many times that
none of them would exist anymore.

So don't bother to put an explanation on your credit report.  It just
shows that you don't understand.  It's like a cockroach trying to
explain to a person with bug spray why the bug spray is unfair.  The
cockroach doesn't bother to try to explain, because, being far more
intelligent than most Americans, he knows the person wouldn't hear him
anyway.

If that cockroach wants to have one chance in hell of getting a fair
deal, he has to explain to a judge why he thinks bug spray is
unhealthy.  He can't do it by attaching an explanation to his credit
report.

 
| Nothing forces a lender to pay any attention to FICO's "judgements" any more
| than anyone forces you to pay attention to a Consumer Reports rating. And
| nothing legally forces you do something based on a FICO. You might have
| trouble getting people to let you use their money but it's not like you had
| any fundamental right to use someone's money in the first place.

However, you do have a fundamental right not be be libeled.  Most consumers
are getting approximately correct scores.  But that just makes the exceptions
all that much worse because no one will believe it.

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