Short Sale Reporting Frustrations

[MikeO]

In March of 2009, we short sold our house. There was a first and a second, but I didn't even involve the first since we got enough to cover it. The second settled for around 10% of the original balance.

We were careful up front to get a favorable agreement from Citi on the settlement. This is how they worded the payoff statement "Upon receipt of this payment, we will report as 'paid in full for less than the full balance' to all credit reporting agencies." After the sale, I just assumed that's what they did.

When I finally pulled my report around Sept 2010, I was shocked to see it reported as a collection account with the remaining balance, but only by Trans Union. So I disputed with Trans Union and after a couple weeks, they changed it exactly the way it was supposed to be. This is where it started to become strange, however.

When the next reporting cycle came (seems to update around the 30th), the account reverted back to being reported as a collection account. So I thought it was slightly weird, but I just disputed again, and again it was reported correctly.

After the 3rd time of doing this (same thing was happening on my wife's report - again, only TU), I decided to give Citi a call. After some effort, I found the department that has the file, and talked to them. They were extremely pleasant, and assured me that the account was fully settled, it was not a collection account, and they would take care of it. Sure enough, they fixed it, and even removed all of the previously reported late payments came off (my True Credit monitoring reported an alert "improved account" ......). Just showed a 0 balance account as settled. Best I could hope for.

However, a few days later (same time of the month) the account reverted right back to being reported as a collection account with a balance. Now I'm completely at a loss as what to do. The only explanation that I can think of to explain this, is that multiple divisions within Citi are maintaining the file. It took quite some time to even locate the division that could give me information on it. So one division may be updating the file, and then another division is on a regular reporting cycle and overwrites it. Also, why is only Trans Union showing this?

Any ideas?