An ex-Toyota worker is advising customers about how to go about sending credit dispute letters.
TikTok user Shamara Wells (@shamarawells) formerly worked for Toyota Financial. During her tenure there, she says she became knowledgeable about the ins and out of the credit industry.
In a viral TikTok that’s accrued over 49,000 views, Shamara shared a simple tip involving credit disputes. And throngs of folks on the application are thanking her for it.
Ex-Toyota Financial worker lays it out
“Here is something I learned about credit repair when I worked at Toyota Finance!” Wells writes in a text overlay of her video. In a caption for the post she shares the purpose of her video: Fixing credit. “Here is something I learned while working at Toyota about repairing credit and starting over on the credit journey!”
She begins her video by speaking directly into the camera and discussing her time working for Toyota finance. According to the TikToker, one of the perquisites for employees was to have excellent credit scores themselves.
“When I worked for Toyota finance, you had to have excellent credit to work there,” she said. “Like they ran your credit before you started. And they ran your credit throughout the duration of you working there.”
Wells continued, “They took pride in you having good credit.” Presumably, this measure was taken to ensure applicants had knowledge of the credit system. If they had good credit, then it seems it’s assumed they could better help customers with inquiries.
Toyota teaches credit
Furthermore, Wells said that the company pushed its employees to become more knowledgeable about credit once on-boarded. “And so they taught us a lot about credit,” she said. “Because we had all these credit programs. Where we would be helping individuals.”
Wells said that the impetus for her video was inspired by a blast from the past email during her Toyota Finance days. After logging into her Yahoo email account, she came across some workplace correspondence from the automotive entity.
She said, “And recently I was in my Yahoo account and I ran across some notes from way, way, way back then. And I am going to share some of the things that we used to do. To help people with their credit back in the day.”
First, she urged folks to stop sending dispute letters to credit bureaus. Oftentimes, folks may be unaware of what’s ruining their credit.
It could be a flag made in error. Consequently, folks will want to send letters disputing these flags to the credit bureau. However, Wells informs her audience that there’s a better way: Affidavits. “Don’t send dispute letters to the credit bureaus. Send affidavits to the credit bureaus.”
Affidavits mean business
She adds that there’s a specific detail you shouldn’t leave out when sending these affidavits. And it’s that one of the sentences on these documents should be printed out in blue ink. She explains the logic behind this.
“And on your affidavit write one sentence in blue ink,” she said. “When you send a dispute letter or an affidavit to the credit reporting agencies. A system called E-Oscar scans that affidavit or dispute letters for key words. And it responds to you automatically based upon on the keywords that it found in your dispute letter. Or your affidavit.”
So what does blue ink have to do with this? Wells said that this technique ensures an actual human looks at your dispute letter/affidavit. Otherwise, you’ll get an auto-reply from a system that scans your letter for key words.
“But if you write in blue ink, it confuses the system. And a human has to review your dispute letter or affidavit. And that’s what you want. You want human eyes to see your dispute letter or affidavit,” she said.
The E-Oscar system
According to this Credit Boards forum post, others have discussed E-Oscar scanning correspondence for keywords. Judging from comments on the post it would seem that folks have previously duped E-Oscar by sending in handwritten dispute letters.
However, instead of doing this, one commenter in the forum posed a solution similar to Wells’. They wrote that folks sending dispute letters and affidavits could do so on dark paper. Additionally, like the TikToker recommended, using different colored ink can also do the trick. The same user, while responding to another person on the forum, further explained their trick’s purpose.
“I’m suggesting that instead of employee reading letter and entering two-digit code into E-Oscar, that they use OCR and automate the whole process of your dispute,” they wrote. “If you gunk up the works, it must be manually processed and you should have better results.”
Other E-Oscar mentions
Credit consulting company Quest Credit Solutions posted a write-up about E-Oscar. Moreover, the business echoed Wells’ concerns about automated reading of dispute letters. Quest explained that E Oscar uses an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) program.
Going on, the company states this initial, OCR screening process is used to toss out many disputes. Think of it as a gatekeeper to you improving your credit score. “OCR systems work by thoroughly scanning each letter to pull out information and keywords the credit bureaus have deemed important. After a complete scan, letters get marked as either legitimate or frivolous. Frivolous disputes get discarded, and legitimate disputes move on to the next step of the process: An E-Oscar system.”
Once it’s passed through OCR, E-Oscar implements its own scan. Presumably, this can be bypassed by Wells’ blue ink “hack.”
TikTokers sound off
One commenter said that they even change the type of paper that they use when sending disputes.
They wrote, “OK, what should the affidavit read when sending it to the credit bureau? BTW, I use blue ink on yellow or pink construction paper. Construction paper has fibers like money that don’t scan well.”
Numerous other folks in the comments section also told Wells that they wanted her to post more credit rescue content. A chorus of “more” and “more please” echoes as you scroll down the video.
And someone else expressed their thanks. “This is great information to use and share,” wrote the user.
@shamarawells Here is something I learned while working at Toyota about repairing credit and starting over on the credit journey! #fyp #fypシ #credit #blacktiktok ♬ original sound – shamarawells|40+contentcreator
The Daily Dot reached out to Toyota Financial and Wells via TikTok comment for further information.
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