Client questions

21 Apr 2013

Reporting, misreporting and tradeline refund policies.

Recently, a client posed some penetrating questions about seasoned tradelines. They asked how they report, how often they don’t report, how tradeline refund policies work, etc.  We wanted to post the answer to those questions here so that everyone can benefit from the exchange of knowledge.

 

If the fraud alerts prevent the lines from being added, will I get my tradeline refunded?

 

According to section 6 of our agreement with you, you may be charged depending on the circumstance.  Please see below:

THERE ARE OCCASIONS WHEN AN ACCOUNT WILL REPORT TO EITHER 0, 1, 2 OR 3 BUREAUS. IN ANY EVENT, THE FOLLOWING PAYMENT INSTRUCTIONS APPLY.  A) IF AN ACCOUNT APPEARS ON 1 BUREAU ONLY OR NO BUREAU AT ALL, YOU HAVE THE OPTION TO RECEIVE A FULL REFUND OR A REPLACEMENT ACCOUNT AT NO ADDITIONAL COST B) IF AN ACCOUNT APPEARS ON TWO OUT OF THREE BUREAUS OR ALL THREE BUREAUS, THE SERVICES ARE DEEMED COMPLETE.

However, if You fail to remove fraud alerts or security freezes from Your credit report as required under section “4.” of this Agreement, no refund will be considered or issued.

 

Are there any circumstances where I would not be able to remove a fraud alert or a freeze?

 

As with anything revolving around the credit bureaus, there is no guarantee that they will do the right thing.  It is YOUR right to add the fraud alert or security freeze. Furthermore, it “should” be your right to take it away and remove it.

However, they can place their own fraud alerts or security freezes as well.  In short, we can’t answer you aside from to say “they should remove it if you ask them to”.

Is there a scenario where no matter what we do, the tradeline is only reporting on Experian, as an example, but my TU or Equifax never benefits after I’ve spent thousands adding new accounts through you guys?

I didn’t quite understand this question, but I think it was answered above.  If not, please rephrase and I’d be more than happy to address it.

That said, I’ll give it my best shot! If there are no fraud alerts or freezes on your reports, then we would guarantee that the tradeline reports to at least two bureaus. In this case, a tradeline reporting to only one bureau would result in a refund.

However, if there is a fraud alert or freeze on the reports that inhibited the tradeline from reporting, then it is possible that the bureaus that have freezes would not experience the benefit of the tradeline. In this case, no refund would be due since the error was not on our end.

What do you do to confirm with your vendors that the tradelines report properly to all 3 bureaus? If the two lines only hit one bureau in the first month, do we have a way to encourage them to report to the other bureaus?

 

All tradelines have to go through an inspection prior to us using them.  In addition, we take other steps to ensure that the tradelines aren’t tainted in any way prior to being added to a consumer’s file.  Any more thorough of an answer would be a release of company secrets and could be detrimental to you. We would be happy to address more specific questions if you have any.

Yes, there are ways to encourage the tradeline to report. However, these are last resort type techniques that we don’t encourage using unless necessary. The best way is to have a clean file from the get-go and move forward with a reliable company, like us.

 

And probably most importantly, how often is this an issue? If it’s 30% or 50% or 1%, that will impact our best course of action. If it’s at all likely, I will want to do one account at a time until we see what’s hitting which bureaus.

The statistic you are asking for won’t answer your question, because you are asking what is the likelihood that the tradeline will report but the statistic will automatically take into consideration the massively unique characteristics of client files.

We’ve seen issues like this (client file issues) maybe 10 to 15% of the time. Of that, 1% of the time we can’t identify why it didn’t report.  Even in that 1% of the time, the tradeline usually ends up showing up at some point. In this case, the client ends up getting a free tradeline because we’ve already issued a refund at that point.

Updated November 10, 2021

4 thoughts on “Reporting, misreporting and tradeline refund policies.”

  1. After a tradeline has been added. How long does the trade line stay on one’s credit history? Will the trade line keep reporting new history month after month?

    1. The problem is that your tradeline may NOT post BECAUSE the fraud alert wasn’t removed. In that case, you’d probably have to wait an additional month (for another reporting cycle). But, the answer is technically no: If you had fraud alerts and the tradeline report date expiries and the tradeline did not report for that reason, you kinda messed up. IF the company allows you to stay on for another cycle, just make sure you get the fraud alerts off before it reports a second time.

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