How to Beat Credco in Court

George Simons | October 19, 2022

Co-Founder of SoloSuit
George Simons, JD/MBA

George Simons is the co-founder and CEO of SoloSuit. He has helped Americans protect over $1 billion from predatory debt lawsuits. George graduated from BYU Law school in 2020 with a JD-MBA. In his spare time, George likes to cook, because he likes to eat.

Edited by Hannah Locklear

Editor at SoloSuit
Hannah Locklear, BA

Hannah Locklear is SoloSuit’s Marketing and Impact Manager. With an educational background in Linguistics, Spanish, and International Development from Brigham Young University, Hannah has also worked as a legal support specialist for several years.

Summary: Is Credco hurting your credit score or coming after you for a debt? SoloSuit can help you take a stand and beat them.

If you are being sued by Credco due to a delinquent debt, or are considering taking legal action against Credco due to harassment or intimidation related to inappropriate debt collection methods, it is important to go into litigation with your eyes open and to ensure you are fully informed about what to expect during a lawsuit. Conducting sufficient due diligence in the legal process is important since it can help provide advice and guidance on how to beat Credco in court.

What is Credco?

Credco is not a debt collection agency. Rather, Credco is a credit reporting company. Many mortgage lenders utilize “CoreLogic Credco” from Credco to obtain and review merged credit reports from the “Big Three” credit bureaus (i.e. TransUnion, Equifax Experian). This is why you may have noticed an inquiry on your credit report from Credco if you recently applied for a mortgage or attempted to refinance your home.

How does the CreditIQ system work?

CoreLogic Credco offers mortgage lenders and other companies the opportunity to review reports generated from a system known as “CreditIQ.” A CreditIQ report is typically run during the pre-qualification phase of a loan decision. The CoreLogic Credco CreditIQ report combines the merged report from the Big Three credit bureaus along with CoreLogic Credco's own proprietary data. This data gets integrated into existing sections of a standard credit report. The CreditIQ from CoreLogic Credo might include the following types of information not usually contained within a traditional credit report:

Your history, if any, of owning property.
Any legal filings made on a piece of property.
Property tax payments.
Rental applications.
Any history of evictions.
Any filed debt collection attempts (including debt collection lawsuits).
Bankruptcies.
Child support obligations.

Discovering Credco inquiries on your credit report

If you see an inquiry on your credit report from Credco and you have not been working with a mortgage lender, you should consider disputing the inquiry with the credit reporting agency. Why? Because hard inquiries on your credit report can negatively impact your credit score.

Do not let inquiries that should not be on your credit report go undisputed. Failing to remove unnecessary inquiries could potentially result in you having to pay higher insurance premiums and higher interest rates.

Dispute an error on a Credco Report

Whether it is a merged credit report or a CreditIQ credit report from CoreLogic Credco, there is a general presumption that these reports should be free from any blant errors. This is why you should take immediate action if you discover an error on these types of reports. In fact, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) states that consumer reporting agencies should make sure that the information they provide to lenders and other companies is accurate and up-to-date.

Unfortunately, mistakes on these types of reports are fairly common. As a result, the FCRA provides consumers the right to dispute errors on their reports. The credit reporting agencies have 30 days to investigate your dispute and make any corrections. If they fail to take corrective action, you should consider filing a lawsuit in order to beat Credco in court.

Responding to a lawsuit filed by Credco

If, for some reason, you are served with a Complaint filed by Credco, it is extremely important to respond to the lawsuit in a timely manner. Do not ignore the lawsuit. Why? Because you gain nothing by doing nothing. You need to take action and file a formal response to the lawsuit. In legal terms, your response to the Complaint is known as an Answer.

The reason filing an Answer is so important is because failing to do so is basically admitting defeat and letting Credco file a motion to obtain a default judgment against you. Once a default judgment is entered by the Court, you are effectively at the mercy of Credco.

Make Credco substantiate the allegations in its lawsuit

When you file an Answer to Credco's lawsuit, it means Credco has to actually take the time to substantiate the allegations it made against you. This is important because there is a chance Credco may have inadvertently filed the lawsuit and, upon further inspection, decides to drop the suit or offer a settlement to resolve the case.

Make Credco prove the lawsuit was filed within the statute of limitations

As mentioned, responding to a lawsuit is important and is something that far too many consumers fail to do. This is why many large companies similar to Credco assume people will not actually file a formal Answer to a lawsuit and the legal counsel for the company will be able to simply obtain a default judgment. As a result, there are many instances when the company fails to actually invest the time to confirm that they have the legal ability to sue you. Keep in mind, if the applicable statute of limitations has expired, a plaintiff is prohibited from suing you. In most states, a plaintiff (including a company like Credco) only has a finite amount of time to sue you.

If it turns out that the statute of limitations has lapsed, you have the ability to raise this issue as an affirmative defense that could enable you to file a motion to dismiss the lawsuit entirely.

File a counterclaim in court against Credco

In addition to raising different affirmative defenses in response to the lawsuit filed by Credco, you should explore the viability of going on offense by filing a counterclaim against Credco. A counterclaim could be pursued if there is evidence that Credco violated a provision, or provisions, of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA).

Important takeaways for what to do when sued by Credco

Here is what you need to do if you are served with a lawsuit filed by Credco:

Make sure to file your Answer to the Complaint.
Make sure to file the Answer in a timely manner (failure to do so could result in a court ignoring your tardy response and finding in favor of Credco).
In your Answer, make sure to raise affirmative defenses like the statute of limitations and demand that the company provide proof concerning the allegation raised in the company's legal complaint.
If a hearing is ordered by a court, make sure to attend and to be prepared to advocate for your interests.

Best of Luck!

What is SoloSuit?

SoloSuit makes it easy to fight debt collectors.

You can use SoloSuit to respond to a debt lawsuit, to send letters to collectors, and even to settle a debt.

SoloSuit's Answer service is a step-by-step web-app that asks you all the necessary questions to complete your Answer. Upon completion, we'll have an attorney review your document and we'll file it for you.

Respond with SoloSuit

"First time getting sued by a debt collector and I was searching all over YouTube and ran across SoloSuit, so I decided to buy their services with their attorney reviewed documentation which cost extra but it was well worth it! SoloSuit sent the documentation to the parties and to the court which saved me time from having to go to court and in a few weeks the case got dismissed!" – James

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