"Date of Last Activity" lowering credit score?

[red33]

Hi everyone.... I apologize in advance for such a long post. Does anyone have advice on what I should do about this?

I am having a problem with a creditor updating the "Date of Last Activity" field every month with Transunion and it appears to be lowering that score. The creditor is Wells Fargo HELOC.

• I was discharged through Chapter 7 on 10/2010.
• This HELOC was IIB - not reaffirmed.
• Never made any late payments - we continued and still do pay the payment on time every month (they send us "informational statements" monthly)


Every other creditor, including the main Wells Fargo mortgage and our auto loan that were all IIB are porting correctly: Date of Last Activity around 5/2010 - 10/2010.

MyFico confirmed that it is this HELOC account that is, as they put it, "Showing as a recently missed payment or derogatory indicator." Every month! The representative said that Wells Fargo should not be updating the status and date of last activity fields after Chapter 7. Since this reporting on Transunion is the only one that is being reported this way and lower by 70 points I am inclined to believe him. He advised me to contact Wells Fargo about it, but all they did was open up a dispute and say that it is being reported correctly - Chapter 7. They clearly did not even read my letter or the circled items on the credit report since I agree with it saying Chapter 7 - just not having activity updated every month.

In addition, they now put a "Compliance Condition Code" on the tradeline and will not remove it until we agree it is being reported correctly.

So, I guess my questions are:

1. Should the "Status as of" and "Date of Last Activity" fields (even if paying monthly on a discharged debt) be updated after Chapter 7?
2. It sure looks like it, but does something like this lower the credit score for certain, or should I not even worry about it?
3. Is this "re-aging" the account in some way?
4. Should I agree with the reporting and have them remove the condition code?


This seems like we are being punished again every month. We understand that they won't count our monthly payments as positive credit history after the bankruptcy, but how can they count our monthly payments as negative history instead?

Does this mean we have to wait a full 7 years and more before this monthly late payment history stops for good? This does not make any sense. What should we do?

Thank you so much for any responses.

[cheesehd]

I have the same situation. My heloc updates every month in the derog section of my TU report. 5 years of no lates. My understanding is they can report positive payments but not lates after discharge. I'm thinking of starting to run 30 days late so they will stop updating monthly. It does show a zero balance, only the payment history is updating and activity.

[mijd]

Red, Check out the forums at Creditnet.com. I've seen a lot of questions posted and answered similiar to yours. Many senior members there have had a ton of experience with creditors, mortgage companies and credit bureaus.

I had a 1st and HELOC with WF. I asked for help from them when I knew things were going south for me. They never once offered to help until I tried loan modification and that was after WF started foreclosure proceedings. Even then I didn't qualify.

Can't say that there isn't a lot of personal responsbility in my case but no matter how hard you try sometimes you just can't seem to keep your head above water.
Good luck!

[red33]

Thanks for the responses, guys. I will check out some other forums as suggested.

As an update: A few days ago Transunion closed the dispute and deleted the entire history from my wife's account, but they confirmed the status as correct on mine. It is a joint account, same debtor history, same dispute, and everything until that point was identical. So I guess that means one TU rep sees things one way and another sees it differently. That is pretty scary to think this stuff is completely open to interpretation.

Wife's score then dropped ANOTHER 20 points because the "average account length history" got reduced across the board. Over time, I suspect her score will recover but mine is still reporting as a fresh derogatory every month according to FICO. And no explanation as to why hers got deleted and mine stayed the same. I wouldn't be surprised if the HELOC pops back up at some future date on hers too - and at the worst possible time at that!

[pinkpeanut01]

I have purchased triple-bureau reports a couple of times since our discharges. I also this past week contacted a mortgage broker to inquire as to how to best position ourselves to be eligible for a new mortgage a few years down the road. I want to start preparing and saving now, years ahead. Anyway, the gentleman I spoke with pulled and shared with me our official credit reports that he would run through automatic underwriting. Things that looked off or wrong to me on the CRs I was purchasing weren't reporting (or appearing to report) the same way on the one the broker pulled. While some accounts on the purchased CRs showed a recent "date of last activity," the one he gave me had both a DLA date and a "last updated" date. The DLA correctly showed the last time the account was used (or discharged), while the "last updated" showed as recently as this month and was just the creditor's way of saying nothing has changed between DLA and now. He assured me the DLA is the only one that matters. He also said the triple-bureau reports I have been seeing are "for informational purposes only."

The purchased CRs had me concerned by showing as being recently updated despite being closed for over a year, but they were in fact showing properly on the "real" credit report. Based on the reports I had purchased, I found what I thought were about 10 errors, including DLA errors. The "real" credit report had two legitimate errors, which we will now dispute (like showing an open auto loan despite the car being surrendered in our Ch7). All that to say that it seems what we see on our purchased reports doesn't necessarily show that way on the reports actually used to apply for credit. Look closely on your CRs to see if there are two dates - updated vs DLA. I still plan on disputing items that could go either way as far as being correct, but I thought I would share this because it was no info to me.

[Pjmax]

If you are using credit monitoring services or any of the triple bureau pulls, they are fine for monitoring. If you ever see anything questionable, order your full reports from annualcreditreport.com (annual freebies) or from the individual credit bureaus. (Don't purchase scores this way.) As you are now aware, there are differences, one big difference is your full report will show 7 years of payment history and the others only show 2. Many suggest the best way is to order hard copies sent by mail.

If you need to watch your scores, you can order them from MyFico.com, but the score version may or may not be the same as a lender may pull. I don't bother purchasing scores. I use a 3-bureau service, and watch Credit Karma, Credit Sesame and Credit.com, which are free. The free services aren't even close to my real scores, but since I've had a few scores via credit denial letters, I can compare them, and when my free fake scores go up by say 50 points, that usually means my real score went up by like 7. (YMMV, that's just how my scores seem to match up.) I just watch them for progress purposes. Don't put too much weight on these free scores. (I also have a Walmart credit card which gives a free Transunion Fico score every month.

I hope this helps.