About 6 months ago I had a job where I had to commute by train from NYC to Westchester and I signed up with the MTA for their monthly card service where they charged my credit card and mailed me my ticket. It was a great system. Then in June I decided I was going to quit my job at the end of the month so on the 6th of the month I cancelled my monthly card service with them. It seemed to go pretty smoothly until September when I got a letter that I owed them for the month of July.
Apparently they sent me a card for July and tried to bill my card, which of course they couldn’t do since I cancelled my account. This card never arrived in the mail and I called them and told them I never got it. They mailed me a form to fill out and I did just that, mailing the form back in to them within two days of recieving it. Then in November I received a notice from a collection agency in regards to my outstanding debt with the MTA. Damn.
I wrote the collection agency stating that this ticket was incorrectly billed to me and that they were to cease collections on this account. I called the MTA and they sent me yet another form which I filled out and returned, this time with a typed letter explaining the situation. I called them 2 weeks later and they advised they received the form. This was all great and wonderful until yesterday when I received notice from the collection agency that I had 30 days to pay or they were taking me to court.
I sent a furious email to the MTA threatening legal action if they didn’t immediate correct the error and stop the collection agency from continuing to attempt to collect on my account. I got an email from them this morning stating that my account with them was fine and that their management would contact the collection agency immediately to fix the problem. Not trusting them to fix the problem on their own at this point I contacted the collection agency and explained the issue and they stated that their records show my records there as being on hold for the last 6 months while they tried to verify all of this so I faxed them the copy of the letter they sent me and the email sent to me by the MTA and asked them to immediately stop attempting to collect on this debt.
At this point I believe this has been taken care of and I will be following up with both companies for the next few days to make sure this is over and done with, but this morning I checked my credit and I went from a score of 826 to a 730. Basically my credit score fell almost 100 points due to their error! I just about threw up when I saw that and I am now at a loss as to how to fix my credit. I know a 730 isn’t too bad in the grand scheme of things but I worked really hard to maintain my damn near perfect score and now I have been seriously penalized for someone elses error.
Should I have the MTA report the error to the credit bureaus or do I need to be the one to contact them and have this corrected? Is it even possible to get a live representative on the phone at the credit bureaus? (I’ve called them before and it just sent me through a web of automated menus with no promise of a representative to assist me.) What else do I need to do to make sure this issue is over and done?