Appfolio Consumer Relations Team

Appfolio Consumer Relations Team

Contact information:

AppFolio, Inc. – [email protected] or call 866.359.3630 (Option 4 for Consumer Relations)

For information please visit: www.appfolio.com/consumer

  • When do you need to contact the consumer relations team:
    • Consumer wants copy of report
    • Consumer has dispute with the report
    • Property manager has questions about report
  • Timeline:
    • They are legally required to reply within 5 days of a dispute being filed
    • Experian has 30 days to investigate issue
    • Most request are resolved in 7-10 days
    • Required to have a resolution in 30 days
  • Because they do credit reports, they are considered a consumer reporting agency and are governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
  • Restrictions that Fair Crediting Reporting Act puts on team:
    • Disclose screening reports to consumers upon request with consent
    • Investigate disputed information
    • Correct or delete inaccurate information
    • Provide general guidance and help on info reported
  • Reading reports:
    • They provide an overview of various reports to make it easy to read: Red bad, green good
    • SSN not verified means Experian doesn’t have a file on the information – could be too young, new to US, no credit history, etc.
    • Use FICO – person must have one positive active credit line for at least six months to be able to calculate a FICO score; considered a snapshot in time
    • If applicants contact Experian and get a copy of their report, their score will be higher because it is not a FICO score; FICO is more rigorous and a different formula to calculate it
    • Rent Bureau is a way to build credit through rental history; only positively impacts your credit score so tenants paying on time will only ever build their credit; networking tool for property managers
    • Criminal history is not matched by SSN; it is matched by names, addresses, DOB, known aliases, etc.; courts have a different procedure on reporting; you can contact them to clarify something and drill down deeper in the report; 7 years is the statue of limitations so Appfolio sticks to that (except sex offenders – that is for life); some states do not upload criminal data – some won’t because it is expensive or they want people to pay for it
  • Recommended best practices:
    • File dispute quickly:
      • You cannot email them people’s personal identifiable information
      • They are getting encrypting document capabilities soon
    • Communicate: understand your responsibilities for FCRA, follow-up verbal with written, engage Appfolio to assist
    • Stay in Compliance: need written authorization to run background check, need to keep documents for 6 years, only for tenant purposes – you cannot use this on employees, boyfriends, etc.; don’t rescreen because it will hard hit their account twice so call appfolio and they will do it in a way that will hurt their score
    • FAQs:
      • It is a hard hit because it lowers their credit score
      • If the applicants want a copy of the report, have them contact CR team and they will verify their identity and mail them the report

You can watch the full webinar here.


Tags


You may also like

{"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}

Get in touch

Name*
Email*
Message
0 of 350