If P.O. Box 3220 in Buffalo, New York is printed on a letter you are holding, or you are trying to work out where to send a dispute, this is Continental Finance Company’s Cardholder Services box. It is the address the cardholder agreements give for writing to the company about your account — including when you believe what it reported about you to a credit bureau is wrong.
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What this box is actually for
Two cardholder agreements for cards serviced by Continental Finance — one for a card issued by Celtic Bank, one for a card issued by The Bank of Missouri — give the same address in the same words. On credit reporting, both say: “If you believe that the information we furnished is inaccurate or incomplete, please write to us at Cardholder Services, P.O. Box 3220, Buffalo, NY 14240-3220.”
So the box is the right destination for a written dispute about a Continental Finance account. What matters just as much is what else arrives in the same tray.
One box, several very different jobs
Comenity splits its mail across five boxes in Columbus, one job each. Continental Finance does the opposite. The agreements route all of this to 3220:
| Credit reporting disputes | Where you write if information furnished to a credit bureau is inaccurate or incomplete |
| Billing error notices | “If you think there is an error on your Monthly Billing Statement, write to us at: Cardholder Services, P.O. Box 3220” |
| General written notice to the company | “Any written notice from you to us must be sent to us at Cardholder Services, P.O. Box 3220” |
| Arbitration claims | Same box, addressed Attn: Arbitration Claims, by certified mail with return receipt requested |
| Arbitration opt-out | Same box, addressed Attn: Arbitration Opt Out |
| Married Wisconsin residents | Spousal notification required by Wisconsin marital property law |
One address, six jobs. Nothing on the envelope tells the person opening it which of the six you meant, which is why the letter itself has to.
A billing error and a credit reporting dispute are not the same letter
This is the part worth slowing down for, because the two look alike from the outside and behave differently once they are inside.
A billing error notice is a Truth in Lending Act matter. It is about the statement — a charge you did not make, an amount that is wrong, a payment that was not credited. It has its own timetable and its own remedy, and it generally has to reach the company within 60 days of the statement carrying the error.
A credit reporting dispute is a Fair Credit Reporting Act matter. It is about what the company told Equifax, Experian and TransUnion about you — a balance that is not yours, a late payment that was not late, an account that was closed years ago still reporting as open, a tradeline belonging to somebody else.
The same envelope address serves both. If your letter does not say which one it is, it may be worked as the other, and the answer you get back will address a question you did not ask. Put the words “credit reporting dispute” in the first line if that is what it is.
Who Continental Finance is, and whose name is on your credit report
Continental Finance Company services the account. It is not the bank. The cards are issued by other institutions — the agreements we read name Celtic Bank, a Utah-chartered bank, and The Bank of Missouri, a Missouri-chartered bank — and the company’s own materials state that Continental Finance provides services but is not the issuer.
That matters when you go looking for the account on your credit report. The card brands serviced under this arrangement include Cerulean, FIT, Reflex, Surge, Verve, Revel, Matrix, Build and Today. The tradeline may carry the card brand, or the issuing bank, or an abbreviation of either — and it may not say “Continental Finance” anywhere. People conclude the entry has disappeared when it has only been filed under a name they were not looking for.
What to put in the letter
Say what is wrong, in what respect, and what the truth is. Name the account, the tradeline as it appears, the specific entry and the date. Attach what proves it: the statement, the payment confirmation, the closing letter, the identity theft report, the bankruptcy discharge.
Include your full name with any middle initial or suffix, your date of birth, your current address and your addresses for the past two years. Mismatches on those fields are one of the ordinary reasons an account belonging to someone else ends up on your file. Send it so you can prove it arrived — certified mail with return receipt — and keep a copy of what you sent and of the envelope.
Dispute with the bureaus as well — this is the step that matters
Writing to Box 3220 is worth doing, and it is not sufficient on its own.
Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a furnisher’s duty to investigate is triggered by a dispute you file with a consumer reporting agency, which the agency then forwards to the furnisher. That duty lives at 15 U.S.C. § 1681s-2(b). A letter sent only to the company does not start that clock. People mail carefully documented disputes to a servicer’s correspondence box, hear nothing useful, and later find that the step which would have created an obligation was never taken.
Do both. Write to Box 3220, and separately file the dispute with Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — each one you found the error on. Keep every response. If the account is verified as accurate and you know it is not, that response letter is one of the more useful documents you will have, because it shows the company was told and left the entry standing.
Where payments and credit protection claims go instead
Do not mail a payment to 3220. The agreements direct payments to the address shown as “Mail Payments To” on your monthly billing statement, which is a different operation from the correspondence box. A lockbox that processes checks does not read objections and route them onward.
Claims under the optional Continental Credit Protection program go somewhere else again — the program materials give Credit Protection, P.O. Box 8099, Newark, DE 19714-8099. If the letter you received prints its own return address, use the one on the letter and keep it.
How long it takes
A consumer reporting agency generally has 30 days to investigate a dispute, extending to 45 days if you send further information while the investigation is running. The furnisher’s investigation runs alongside it. If the result comes back verified and nothing has changed, that is not the end of the matter — it is usually the point at which the file becomes worth a lawyer reading.
When a Continental Finance entry becomes a claim
The Fair Credit Reporting Act does not impose liability merely for being wrong. What creates a claim is what happens after the company is told. If you disputed the entry, the investigation was not reasonable, the inaccurate information stayed on your report, and something followed from it — a denial, a higher rate, a lost apartment, a withdrawn job offer — that is the shape of a case.
Four documents carry most of the weight: the report showing the entry, your dispute, the response you received, and the adverse action notice from whoever turned you down. Keep them together.
We handle errors on the nationwide credit bureaus, covered on our credit report errors page, and errors in employment and tenant screening, covered under background check errors. For the statute and how claims under it work, see our FCRA lawyer page. For how these companies fit together, see consumer reporting agencies. There is a similar page on PO Box 182789 in Columbus, Ohio, which is Comenity Bank’s credit reporting dispute address.
Send us the letter
Reviewing a Continental Finance letter, a dispute response or a credit report entry costs nothing, and you pay nothing unless we win. If you are holding something from Box 3220 and are not sure what it means, send it over and we will tell you whether there is a claim in it.