First Consumers National Bank - FCNB We agreed to setttle our 684.00 debt for $600.00 in July of 2000.00. FCNB continues to errorneously report that they wrote off $869. of the debt even tho the total debt was just over $600. They con Beaverton Oregon

First if your dates are correct the amount they are reporting does not matter, and you may have more success with Experian than FCB.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act(FCRA) only allows negative information to be reported for 7 years from the date of action.  If they wrote off the debt in 2000 you are way beyond that date.  It is against the FCRA for any company to "re-age" the debt to make it appear as if it is newer than it is.  It does not matter if you settled one day before the original 7 years expired, they can not re-age the debt having it appear for another 7 years.

Your first step is to dispute it with Experian.  Send them a letter stating that it is beyond the allowed reporting period per the Fair Credit Reporting Act.  The exact section is actually 605(15 U.S.C. 1681c) of the FCRA.

605. Requirements relating to information contained in consumer reports [15 U.S.C. 1681c] (a) Information excluded from consumer reports. Except as authorized under subsection (b) of this section, no consumer reporting agency may make any consumer report containing any of the following items of information: (1) Cases under title 11 [United States Code] or under the Bankruptcy Act that, from the date of entry of the order for relief or the date of adjudication, as the case may be, antedate the report by more than 10 years. (2) Civil suits, civil judgments, and records of arrest that from date of entry, antedate the report by more than seven years or until the governing statute of limitations has expired, whichever is the longer period. (3) Paid tax liens which, from date of payment, antedate the report by more than seven years. (4) Accounts placed for collection or charged to profit and loss which antedate the report by more than seven years.

Now there are exceptions to the 7 Year rule for charge-offs and collections.  However those involve items such as Student Loans and do not appear to apply in your case.

If you do an Internet search you can find many sample dispute letters.  The important item is to send it by Certified Mail so you have some verifiable tracking that they not only received it, but the date they received it.  They have only a limited amount of time to respond to the dispute, 30-45 days depending on how you got the report.  If they fail to respond or remove the item you may be able to take action against them by filing a suit.  You are able to sue them for $1000 per violation in the FCRA, and since it is a small amount you can do that through the Small Claims court process.