Experience with Removing: Hunter Warfield
Statistics:
- Original Creditor: Apartment Complex
- Original Amount: $416
- Collection Account: $485
- Debt Status: Valid
- Date of First Delinquency: Late 2007
- Collection Status: Paid in Full
- Removal Technique: Direct Dispute
Hunter Warfield proved to be quite a difficult removal. I had read online that they are not very accommodating with good will letter removals, and I paid this debt prior to understanding exactly how to work successful pay for deletes.
This was a valid debt. In late 2007, I moved from my current apartment complex. A friend of mine helped me move, and we decided it would be cute to throw a baseball through the wall, just to show them how we really felt about the complex. Clearly, this was a wise move. They decided, with just cause might I add, to bill me $416 for the drywall repair.
Since I had moved, and didn’t leave a forwarding address, they had no real way to contact me and the account went in to default. In early 2008, they assigned the account to Hunter Warfield.
My discovery of the Hunter Warfield collection came at the same time as most of the others, when I pulled my credit report in November 2010. I sent a couple debt validation letters, but they didn’t validate. After a couple months of unsuccessful pay for delete letters, I decided to pay this debt.
As mentioned in previous posts, my primary method of paying off my collection debt was to pay in full, with the hope they would good will removal after the fact.
I spoke to a representative at Hunter Warfield, and they offered a settlement. I declined the $333 settlement and paid the entire amount, $485. I asked on the phone for deletion, and of course they stated they can’t because it is against their company policy.
I sent over 20 good will letters, with no success. I also tried to frivolously dispute the debt with the credit reporting agencies, but they came back as verified.
I decided to try a little bit of a backhanded removal technique. Instead of filing an additional dispute, or sending a method of verification to the reporting agencies, I decided to file a Direct Dispute with the creditor. I decided to make a claim that the date of first delinquency was inaccurate. The statute of the FCRA that deals with this subject is 623(a)(5). I didn’t think it would work, but it was worth a shot. I didn’t have real documentation to prove that their information was wrong, but I decided to put the burden back on them to show me the correct date.
My hope was, that because of statute and the requirement they verify their information, they wouldn’t want to contact the original creditor and hassle them for information, considering the debt was paid in full.
The letter was simple. I just mentioned per the FCRA, I am disputing this information and referenced the statute.
Less than 2 weeks later, my credit monitoring service showed this account had fallen off all three credit reports. This was such a shot in the dark, but my logic work. Since it was paid, they did not want to deal with contacting the original creditor to get that information.
0