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.