There was a time when proving that you were alive wasn't real difficult. You could show up some place and say “See, I'm alive. I'm living and breathing” and people would take your word for it. I guess that was then, and this is now. A woman in St. Louis has spent quite a long time trying to convince people at the credit reporting agencies that she's not dead. She has now filed a lawsuit to prove she actually is alive. It reminds me of a scene from the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”
Below are excerpts of the story in bold, and my valuable insights are in italics.
A 40-year-old St. Louis woman isn't dead, but she said she spent months trying to convince credit reporting agencies that she's alive.
Alexandria Goree is suing Experian, TransUnion and Equifax over the glitch, contending that it was difficult to get loans or a new home, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.
I can only imagine what the phone conversation was like when she called the credit reporting agencies.
“Hello, credit reporting agency. You have me as dead, and I'm not dead.”
“Our records show you as dead so you must be dead.”
“If I'm dead how am I talking to you?”
“I don't know. Are you trying to contact zombie credit bureaus? I'm no dead expert. If the records say you're dead, then you're dead. Now just stop calling us and go do what you dead people do with your time.”
“I'm filing a lawsuit.”
“You dead people are all the same. Next thing you know you'll be marching in the streets demanding dead human rights and governmental benefits for the dead. You make it so difficult for the living.”
“I'm not dead.”
“Yeah, tell that to our records. You dead people always think you're so clever.”
Her suit, filed last week in federal court, said Goree found a "deceased" notation on her credit files in the summer of 2013. Such a notice can appear when a creditor informs a reporting agency that one of its customers has died.
Can you imagine an attorney for the credit bureaus trying to plead his case in court?
“Your honor there is not proof the woman sitting over there is actually alive. A creditor informed the credit bureaus that she was dead. Yes, the creditor was called “You buy $100 worth of our stuff, or you'll regret it,” but that shouldn't matter.”
“Counselor, the woman sitting there is speaking with her attorney, able to participate in her lawsuit and seems quite alive to me.”
“Yeah, so do zombies. I mean they can also do a lot of stuff with robotics these days. I think she could be a zombie living inside a robotic body. Who know what a creature like that would do with credit cards or a good credit history. I don't believe the court wants to entertain that epidemic on our financial system. I mean what exactly is alive? Plants are alive, but you don't see us issuing them credit cards too much.”
Representatives of TransUnion and Experian told the newspaper that they couldn't comment on pending litigation. A spokesman for Equifax said the company's attorneys were just notified about the lawsuit and needed more time to research it.
Credit Bureau “Is this lady alive or is she dead.”
Attorney “Well, technically she's alive. She works, has a life and friends, so I guess a case could be made that she is actually alive. Someone said she's dead, so we believed them.”
Credit Bureau “You mean nobody checked for a death record? We just accepted the word of someone without checking it out? We have all vast amounts of information on every living person. We don't know if someone is dead?”
Attorney “She's only technically alive, but she could also be technically dead since there is obviously someone who thinks of her as dead.”
Credit Bureau “Good point, let's show this person she's not pushing us around just because she's dead. I hate it when dead people have such attitudes.
She said it took months of phone calls, letters and emails to convince Experian and TransUnion to return her to the land of the living. It's unclear if Equifax also has done so.
This makes me wonder if Experian or TransUnion put her on a wooden bed and raised her up toward the sky during an electrical storm. When her electrically jolted body is brought back down some humpback Experian or TransUnion employee wearing a white doctor's coat yells “She's alive and can now have credit cards and a credit history.”
News story: Women Sues Credit Agencies Because She Is Not Dead
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