How A Red Light Camera Ticket Can Damage Your Credit Without You Knowing It

Bob needed a score of 700 or higher to get the loan, and had it until ACS, a Dallas based company reported an unpaid collection of $100. “My initial reaction was, ‘What could it be?’” asked Bob. “Who is ACS? I don’t have a single dollar owed to a credit card,” he continued. ACS, Affiliated Computer Services, is the private company the City of Dallas hired to run its red light camera program.

As it turns out, several of the cars used by Bob’s company were in his name. Someone driving one of them got a red light ticket in the spring. He didn’t know about the ticket until the collection showed up on his credit report. He still doesn’t know who was behind the wheel. “Was it an employee that had a ticket in the car that thought they could pay it and didn’t want to tell me about it? I don’t know,” said Bob.

According to Fox 4 News, in the first 11 months of Dallas’s red light camera program, ACS and the city reported 11,073 unpaid citations to credit bureaus.