triviageek

I had managed during that 18 months (of repaying the 401k loan) to repay about $500 of the principal still owed on the crooked credit card, so that the debt was now about $2500 and I hoped that my bank would loan me that much. Alas no, the request was turned down. When I obtained a copy of my credit report, I discovered that a debt collector had posted that I was in default on a medical bill that was not mine. ARGH! Just what I did not need.

It literally took months to get that debt collector to remove the mistake from my credit report. Don't believe all that hype about "challenging a mistake and getting it removed within 30 days". It doesn't necessarily happen that easily. It turns out that Equifax is not only a credit reporting bureau but they also operate as a debt collector in my home state.

Yeah, I think that's a conflict of interest, especially when asked to investigate the mistake all the credit bureau part did was ask the debt collector department "were you hired to collect this debt?" "Yes." "Then it must be valid."

Like I said, it took months. (The credit bureau part of Equifax only removed the item from *MY* credit history when the debt collection part of Equifax had successfully collected the sum from the one who really was responsible for paying the medical bill. If they hadn't been willing to pay, I'd have been stuck forever. AND it turned out that they had only failed to pay the sum BECAUSE the medical billing department who'd later hired Equifax debt collectors had neglected to ever send the correct people a bill for the medical services!)

Finally I was able to get the item (ie. failure to pay a medical bill) removed from my credit history. I also challenged a lot of old stuff on my credit history and got it removed. So all I had was the really, really bad info from that one crooked credit card company.

So at this point I applied to my credit union for a $2500 loan to pay off that credit card. Success, the loan was approved, I thought. Until I discovered that they would only make out the check to the credit card company.

ARGH. Not ONE check made out to that fraudulent company I protested. They'll "lose" it again. Then who has to repay the $2500? Will you collect it from THEM or will you expect ME to pay it. Either give me the the $2500 directly or no deal.

They wouldn't do that. *sigh*

After several phone calls to the manager of the credit union, I discovered the problem. Applying for a loan to repay a debt meant that the loan check was made out to the one who was owed the money. Not to the one who was borrowing the money.

That would work if *I* were the dishonest one. But I wasn't. That fraudulent credit card company was the crook. I refused to sign any loan that obligated me to repay something that I had not received especially when I had no control over how the money was paid to that crooked credit card company.

Finally I asked the manager if I could borrow $2500 for "a vacation". The manager promised to take it before their loan committee and THAT request was finally approved.

I borrowed $2500 for a vacation. (My idea of a vacation was clearly paying off the most crooked credit card company in existence.)

And I was able to make the payments using the same stealthy technique I described earlier, so that they did not realize what I was doing until too late.

I not only repaid the debt, I paid about $5 more so that they owed me that amount and had to send me the next few credit card statements showing the over payment.

And yes the credit union was quickly repaid via automatic deductions from my paycheck.