How to Dispute a Credit Report
Your credit report holds information about how you pay your bills, how much
credit and debt you have, even legal information. It's important that this
information is published correctly since an error on your credit report could
mean you being denied for a loan, a mortgage, or even a job. You can dispute
a credit report error, and in many cases if you handle the situation
correctly even get the item removed. The key is knowing how to dispute credit
report information.
You have a couple of different options to dispute credit report errors. You
can attempt to dispute the items yourself with the three big credit bureaus, or
hire a professional (normally a credit repair law firm) to handle the process
for you.
If you decide to go at it alone, remember this doesn't happen over night. The
credit bureaus are for profit businesses and every time they have to spend time
investigating one of your claims they aren't making money. It can be difficult
to manage the negotiations yourself, and have the patience to see it through.
Many people choose to opt for a professional service that deals with the credit
bureaus every day to manage their negotiations for them. This gives you a much
better chance at success, in-turn lowering your FICO score, and improving your
credit report.
Hiring a Professional to dispute credit report errors
A lot of the clients who hire credit repair professionals first tried the
process on their own. If you're one of those people then you likely know how
much easier it is to have someone else manage the communication between the
credit bureaus and yourself. The system is there to help consumers, but it isn't
always the easiest to navigate especially if you don't have time to commit to
the process.
Hiring a professional (usually a lawyer) to dispute errors on your credit
report might cost a few dollars but your success rate will sky rocket. It would
be difficult for you or I to negotiate with the credit bureaus as well as
someone who does it all day everyday. This is one of those areas of life that is
best left to the professionals for optimal results.
Credit repair lawyers will need you to provide copies of your most recent
credit reports, then determine together which items you want to dispute. From
there they'll go to work on the first item. Once they achieve success they'll
move onto the next. I haven't come across firms that will dispute multiple items
at once, this may be a law or possibly just to manage things more efficiently.
It is possible that a professional won't be able to remove certain items you
want to dispute. For what ever reason, just keep in mind that challenges to your
credit report aren't always 100% successful. While firms like Lexington Law
state they've removed over 600,000 negative entries on their clients credit
reports in 2006, I am sure there were some items that they just couldn't have
removed.
Handling a credit report dispute on your own
If you opt to contact the credit bureaus directly you first need a copy of
all three credit reports. Each credit bureau will provide you with a copy of
your current credit report. From there you can determine if there are errors on
your current credit report. Keep in mind that it is not legal to dispute items
that are not errors.
There are form letters all over the Internet you can use to draft up a
dispute letter. I am an advocate of using a professionals services to help
improve your credit report so I don't have any form letters on my site. How ever
a search for "credit report dispute letter" will likely yield results.
Credit Bureaus have 30 days to respond to your claim that there is an error
on your report. Once they have investigated the disputed item on their end they
will make a decision to either remove items from your credit report or
leave the item. After that they will reply, and sometimes send a new copy of
your current credit report. If you're successful, you then move onto the next
item you believe is an error. All in all it can take 50-60 days to hear back
from your initial claim.
It takes a lot of time to handle this process yourself. This is the primary
reason people hire professionals to dispute credit report errors.
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