An app that disputes in the buyer's name, monthly, against one bureau produces a tri-merge with one file full of flags and two files nobody has read. Price the loan on the two.
The buyer signed up in January. Free tier, then twenty dollars a month. The app connected to their TransUnion file, flagged the negatives, and has been filing disputes on a cycle ever since, in the buyer's name. The buyer has not written a letter, has not seen one, and does not know what was disputed. They know the app shows a number going up.
Here is what you see. TransUnion: dispute remarks on most negative tradelines, a few items missing that are present on the other two, and reinsertions where a furnisher certified an item back. Experian and Equifax: untouched, every negative where it was in January, because the app doesn't read those files. The middle score is coming from one of the untouched ones.
Sixty no's a week, and this one is a no that looks like a yes on the buyer's phone.
Two questions.
"Which bureaus does the app dispute?" If the answer is one, the other two are the file you're qualifying on, and nothing has happened to them.
"What did it dispute?" If the buyer can't name an account and a field, neither could the app. Those are the disputes § 1681i(a)(3) lets a bureau call frivolous, and DU under B3-5.3-09 reads the remaining flags as unresolved disputes and routes the file to manual.
Then two instructions.
Have the buyer cancel the app and withdraw any open disputes in writing to TransUnion, so the flags clear before you lock. Thirty days.
Send them to Calvin's piece on the table so they see the difference between a dispute with a field and an app that files adjectives.
The real items on Experian and Equifax are still there and still wrong, and those are the ones a letter with an exhibit will move. Eight files, all three bureaus and the five behind them, read once, and nothing sent in the buyer's name but by the buyer: the referral takes twelve minutes.
Sources
- Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1681i(a)(3) and (a)(5)(B) — frivolous disputes; reinsertion
- Fannie Mae Selling Guide B3-5.3-09 — DU Credit Report Analysis (disputed tradelines)
- Calvin Noman — A table of account numbers is not a dispute
Every statutory citation in this article was checked against the source listed before publication. Nothing here is legal advice; if your situation has legal consequences, talk to a licensed attorney in your state.