I’ve discovered numerous opportunities and solved many problems by interacting with people on Twitter whom I may never have met otherwise. Never has there been a better example of this, however, than what has transpired over the last month or so: the investigation and removal of a negative item on my credit report because I complained about it on Twitter after the usual channels failed me.

My wife and I started house shopping (we ultimately decided to build; more on that later) so I obtained a copy of my credit report via AnnualCreditReport.com — the only (as far as I know) truly free and legit website to get you the copy of your credit report that you are legally entitled to receive once a year. (All those other sites, such as the one with the catchy jingles on TV, require you to sign up for a trial monitoring service to get your “free” report.) Lo and behold, my credit was perfect except for one thing: a collections account in the amount of $141 from late 2005, passed on to the collections agency in 2007, with the original creditor listed as “Comcast Chicago.”

My first thought — what the hell is this? First of all, I’ve never been late on any kind of bill, nor have I ever received any letters or phone calls about a past due account somewhere. Second of all, I’ve never lived in the Chicago market. And I’ve been a Comcast customer for years; don’t you think they would have let me know if I owed them money on some other account? So…how is this possible?

First I initiated a request for an investigation via the site I got my credit report from; I filled out the forms and stated that I had no knowledge of the collections account and I believed the information to be inaccurate. I got a message back from the credit bureaus several weeks later stating that the investigation had been completed and the account had been “verified.” Uh, sure. Now what?

I tried calling the collections agency listed on my credit report. That got me nowhere. To be fair, they probably have people calling all the time saying, “That’s not me, I swear!” At any rate, when I actually did get them on the phone, they could do nothing.

So I wrote to Comcast and stated my case. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, if you request an investigation from an original creditor and they cannot prove the account is valid or do not respond to your request within 30 days, it must be removed from your credit report. However, I missed the part of this law that says they don’t have to bother doing that unless you send certified snail mail that will “prove” you contacted them. I just sent an email, and after about 28 days (after I wrote in again reminding them to get back to me or else I would contact a lawyer), they wrote back and basically said “Sorry, we can’t help you with account issues via email.” Oh, thanks so much for taking a month to tell me that.

At this point, I vented on Twitter, specifically calling out Comcast for putting a negative item on my credit report for an account I never had. In no time, one of Frank Eliason’s crack executive customer service reps who seem to constantly prowl Twitter replied to me and asked me to email them. I told her my story, she apparently had words with some people, and put me in touch with another wonderful rep who would spend the next three weeks pushing to get my case resolved. Long story short, I had an account with a different cable company back in the summer of 2005 who, as this little investigation revealed, didn’t really cancel my account when I called and told them to just before I moved away…they just kept billing me at that address and never called me and asked “Hey, how come you stopped paying?” Then Comcast bought them, and eventually sent the account to collections. Comcast agreed the original technician I had spoken with to cancel the account screwed up, and since no one had ever called me and given me a chance to correct the situation they said they would have the collections agency close the account.

Well, today I got that letter. It’s a letter from the collections agency stating they have received notification from Comcast that the account is to be closed, and they have notified the three major credit bureaus. Considering this one detrimental account made the difference between a very good credit score and merely an OK one, I am extremely happy. If it weren’t for @ComcastBonnie and the ever-present @ComcastCares (Frank Eliason) watching out on Twitter, this may have never been resolved in time for us to save thousands on the financing of our new home. So huge thank you to them for coming through, and wish us luck building our new house! (Dedicated blog for that coming soon!)