Sherman Acquisitions fraudulent credit reporting. Rip-off! Sharks! Houston Texas

I have received complaints from consumers about thsi company and other collection agencies reporting information long after it should be reported.

I want to clarify something here. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, collection accounts may legally be reported for up to seven years and six months from the date the account originally became delinquent, regardless of whether they are paid and regardless of whether you made a new agreement with them or any other collection agencies.

Collectors are supposed to submit the original date of delinquency (to the bureaus) but this doesn't always happen. Unfortunately, while debt collection complaints comprise the #1 area of complaint with the FTC, and they have stopped some engaging in illegal practices there is a lot more to be done! Still, anyone with a debt collector problem should file a complaint with the FTC at www.ftc.gov since they make an annual report to Congress and do investigate patterns of complaints.

I am the author of The Ultimate Credit Handbook and contributor to StopDebtCollectorsCold.com so I've spent a lot of time researching these issues. It's extremely frustrating to hear the stories of consumers who are hounded or intimidated by abusive debt collectors. It's also frustrating how difficult these items can be to remove from a credit report.

Keep excellent records of all your communication with the collection agency. If you follow the usual routes for complaining and don't get anywhere you may want to contact a consumer law attorney with Fair Debt Collection Practices Act experience at www.naca.net. I hope you are successful in getting this resolved!

Not to worry! Your credit isn't ruined. This same thing just happened to me recently and it's a non issue. These out-of-the-blue companies purchase the rights to very old debts for pennies on the dollar, and many times, even $1 in total. That gives them the right to collect.

They are trying to get you to ACKNOWLEDGE the debt, and that's a big big big mistake! When you re-acknowledge the debt, the 7 year statute of limitations for credit reporting clock starts over, and their debt becomes fully collectable and enforcible in a court. You should NEVER communicate with these companies in any way, shape or form. They can do you no harm.

They CAN however (as you and I both experienced) illegally re-report the debt on your credit report. Had they put the correct date, the data would have been rejected by the reporting agency... so they put a current date.

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO is dispute the item with the credit reporting agency. For the "reason" for disputing simply say "Statue of limitations problem". Legally, they have 30 days to get it removed. Mine disappeared THE FOLLOWING DAY (and the score shot right back up to the number it had been) when using the online dispute with Experian (TRW). The unfortunate thing is that you'll have to look for it, and then dispute if it appears, with each of the big three agencies (Experian, Equifax, TransUnion) to be sure it's off all reports.

Experian (and the other two can be included as well) have a great monitoring package. You get to pull a report whenever you want, and you can set up email alerts when ANYTHING hits your report, or anytime it is inquired on. The service I have is $79. a year (last time I paid, but it may have gone up a bit) and it's worth EVERY PENNY to me to police assholes like that. In their case, they had their illegal posting on my report a total of TWO DAYS, probably thinking it'd be there much longer and they'd screw me over some how. But I got the last chuckle on that one.

Good luck... and MONITOR!