Last week, we received a random letter from someone demanding that we remove incorrect information about them from the credit bureaus and referencing account numbers that were not valid. This week we recieve from a diffent person a 'willingness to settle payment' on an account and demanding that we remove all information about them from the credit bureaus. These people are not now, nor have they ever been, our customer! Should we respond to these in some way? They both 'demand' that we fax a reply back to an 888 number. Any advice is appreciated.

Sounds "phishy" to me... (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

I ran into this a bit in my prior life....our fraud dept. suspected that the authors of the letters had some, but not all, of a person's information...so they send out these bogus credit disputes, hoping that a company is careless and sends back detailed information about what they may or may not have. A careless response might also yield address and phone number information. I say document internally that you've researched and found nothing in your records.

I respond to FCRA disputes here. I had one something similar but different happen. My deadbeat customer's file got crossed with another person's file. (Had similar first names & last names, with different spelling, ex: Kathy Smith & Cathy Smyth) it didn't help that their SSN's (due to area of birth) started with the same first 3 numbers (ex: 123-44-1122 & 123-45-2233). I called the credit bureau to determine what to do. They had to do an internal correction and sent out ACDV's through E-oscar to clean it all up.

It wasn't that WE were reporting incorrect information - but that the credit bureau combined two people's files.