Canada

I am in the US, but I had to fight them over the course of several years after a rental agency sold an old debt to a collection agency right after the COVID shutdown happened. The rental company claimed I owed several thousand in damages to my old apartment, my roommates and I had taken them to court and won, meaning the debt was dismissed legally. If they wanted to try to collect it, they would have needed to sue me to reverse this decision.

I sent both credit agencies all of the proof, including the legal paperwork for the judge's dismissal of the debt. They refused to accept it and remove the debt because "the collection agency confirmed they had the right info". The collection agency refused to stop reporting the debt, even when I provided them the same proof. I had to scrape up another few thousand over the next five years to pay a lawyer to threaten to sue the lot of them in federal court before they removed it. And in the meantime, my credit score tanked, and I was repeatedly denied housing, needed credit like car financing, and even was denied opening a bank account.

Both of these companies are operating with flagrant disregard of the law, besides the fact that they shouldn't exist in the first place. The problem is in the fact that we woukd need a massive class action to do anything, and no one is willing to do that. So they keep getting away with bringing people's lives to a halt. I was lucky enough to have a partner to help me through it, but I know so many others who weren't so lucky.