I had a funny episode with TD when I was closing the bank account when I was leaving Canada for good.

Very hard to close the account, even in person. My point was to make sure that there is no recurring payments left on the account.

Similar bullshit. You ask to close the account, and they keep asking you back with a square face.

In the end, a year after I left Canada, I get a call from collectors saying that they have $600+ debt+penalties+interest on my allegedly closed credit card from a service the bank added itself, and that they set my credit score to zero.

Then I found that TD subscribed me on some bullshit "credit alert" right in the month when I asked for account closure.

An immediate WTF was how in the world my credit card was still active. In than latter came out that TD does not let people really close their CC accounts, only "stop them," which only amounts to just hiding you CC from web UI, and that you need specifically say that you want to "really close" the account, which I did. So, next time, if will ever set my foot in the country, I will need to ask them to "really, really, really close my account"

I had, surprisingly, the opposite experience when I exasperatedly wanted to cancel my BofA account. I had had it with their awful customer service and simply wanted to never do business with them again. I went into a branch expecting a difficult process. The teller had me all sorted and done in 5 minutes. I was impressed.

Errr, what's "TD"?

A Canadian bank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TD_Canada_Trust

They're in the US as well, both as a bank and as one of the bigger brokerage firms, TD Ameritrade

TD is okay in the US as a bank.

Ameritrade is owned by Charles Schwab now with TD having a minority stake in Schwab. Before that TD had a 40% stake in Ameritrade.

Does this sort of thing still end up hurting your credit score though? I don't know how this actually works, but I feel like I've heard scary things about it.

If that invalid "debt" was still on your credit report you'd just file a dispute to have it removed.

When you remove an invalid debt, make sure that the bank doesn't sneak it back in. The banks "push" to the credit scoring companies on regular intervals, so although the credit scoring company-ies may remove it, unless the bank/source removes it from THEIR systems, it will be re-pushed 1-3-6 months later.

(source: Dave Ramsey's mentioned that in many of his radio shows/podcast episodes)

6 months seems like a long latency. I've been nervously eyeing mine due to a credit payment mishap in nov/dec (of under 2 dollars) that lead to what I expected was a 30 day late payment, but as of today it hasn't shown up on the credit reports (I check two bureaus). After reading your comment my paranoia is starting to resurface.

I don't see how the distinction matters to the individual consumer. It's interesting as an insight into how the credit scoring system is organized i guess

And then you have a slam dunk FCRA claim.

It's very difficult as a consumer to get things off your credit report. You may be able to do.it, but expect it to take months of effort. For many small debts, it's just not worth it (and I believe this is by design).

This might help: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...