The strategy to repairing your credit is as follows: 1. Request and review your credit report from all three bureaus. You can get a free copy of the report by going to www.annualcreditreport.com (the official FTC sponsored site for free credit reports), and this will allow you to obtain information from all three bureaus which is important. 2. Analyze your credit report. 3. Make a list of all the items you consider to be questionable or negative. Clearly identify each item in your report that you dispute then determine why you dispute the information. 4. Write a dispute letter to the bureaus. 5. Send the letter to the credit bureaus. Make sure you send it registered or certified mail for tracking purposes. 6. Document your efforts. Record when you send your letters and the results. 7. Wait for the bureaus to investigate your claims. 8. Analyze the results. 9. Determine if the item was deleted or changed to your satisfaction. Repeat steps 4-8 above until you feel the dispute is settled satisfactorily. Remember, there is no charge for reinvestigation. If you do not get the results you want, dispute the listing again! That s all there is to it! It seems easy enough, but you must have patience because the credit bureaus are not always very cooperative. They make their money by providing credit reports to lenders, not by fixing bad credit information in their databases. Detailed instructions for the above credit repair steps are as follows: 1. Request a copy of your credit report You can get a free copy of your credit report by going to www.annualcreditreport.com. Alternatively, you may contact each bureau directly at the following websites: www.transunion.com, www.experian.com, and www.equifax.com. If you have been turned down or denied credit, the appropriate bureau is required to give you a free copy of the report used. Be sure to read the details in the denial of credit letter. 1 P a g e
2. Analyze your credit report Review all accounts with outstanding balances and verify payment histories. Be sure to pay extra attention to items reported as collections, judgments, charge-offs, or liens. Make a copy of your report and highlight everything you view as a negative listing. 3. Rank questionable/negative items Now that you have your list, you should rank each item according to the amount of damage they are doing to your overall credit picture with the most damaging item at the top of the list and the items that are neutral at the bottom (see the list below to assist with ranking). Rank the most damaging information first, followed by the next, followed by the items which are neutral. Do this for each credit report, and remember, they may not all have the same information on them. They may even have duplicate information. In this case, you will need to write each credit agency individually for each duplicate item. The items listed below are in order of descending importance with the first item being the most damaging to your credit: Bankruptcy Foreclosure Repossession Loan Default Court Judgments Charge-offs Collections Past Due Payments Late Payments Credit Rejections Credit Inquiries 2 P a g e
4. Requesting corrections and disputing your credit. What should you challenge in your credit dispute? Everything! You should always shoot for a complete deletion as well. Don t bother changing information within a collection listing, charge-off, court record, repossession, foreclosure, or settled account. As the basic nature of these listings is negative, changing the information within the listing will yield no improvement. Severely negative listings, such as these, must be disputed on the basis of complete deletion or not disputed at all. 5. Make sure that you send everything certified or registered mail This is important, as you must be able to tell when letters were sent and received. It gives you some leverage with the Credit Reporting Authorities (CRAs) if they do not respond in the time frame required by law. 6. Document you credit repair efforts As soon as you have ordered your credit reports and photocopied your order letters and checks, you must create a precise organizational system to track your correspondence with the credit bureaus and your creditors. Why is this necessary? Unfortunately, credit items you have worked so hard to remove mysteriously reappear. If this happens, it is usually easy to have the items deleted permanently if you show your complete records on the first removal. Why take a chance? As you proceed through these steps, keep copies and records of all correspondence you send and receive. If you should encounter any special difficulty and would like help in repairing your credit, you will need these records to proceed. Every time you have a telephone conversation with a creditor, you must document the conversation by recording the name of the person with whom you spoke, his or her position, the date and time of the conversation, what was said, and what was agreed upon. **Be sure to keep the original credit report to evaluate the results of your credit repair efforts. 7. Wait for the credit bureau to finish investigating Once the credit reporting agency has received your dispute letter, they are obligated to investigate. This obligation is not contingent upon you having 3 P a g e
been denied credit. According to the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1997, the three credit bureaus must do the following: Resolve the consumers disputes within 30 days In response to consumers complaints that documentation in support of their dispute was disregarded, the credit bureaus have to consider and transmit to the furnisher all relevant evidence submitted by the consumer the first time. Consumers will receive written notice of the results of the investigation within five days of completion, including an amended credit file. Once information is deleted from a credit file, the credit bureaus cannot reinsert it unless the entity supplying the information certifies that the item is complete and accurate and the credit bureau notified the consumer within five days. If the new investigation reveals an error, the consumer may ask that the corrected version of the report be sent to anyone who received the report within the last six months. 8. Specialized techniques Depending on the type of listing, you may want to try one or all of the following techniques: Collections - You should always try to dispute the validity of the reporting. Charge-Offs - Try disputing the information within the listing, like the date the account was opened, the high balance, the amount owed, etc. If any of the information is incorrect, you have a good chance of getting the entire thing deleted from your report. Judgments - If you were never served for the judgment, you may have a chance of getting it vacated (voided). Call your county courthouse for the information on the judgment serving requirements in your state and how to file a motion to vacate. Each item will be resolved in one of three ways: 4 P a g e
If the listing is not mentioned in the results list, either you forgot to include it or you did not make your request sufficiently clear. You will need to dispute the item again in your next dispute letter. As the bureaus are legally obligated to respond in writing within 30 days, it is highly unlikely that they are ignoring you. The disputed item is investigated and verified. If you did not get the item removed, most likely, the credit bureaus will give you a cryptic reason as to why. For example, the reason may say item verified meaning that the creditor may have responded to the credit bureau s request for reverification. They may have simply said that the listing was correct and, in this case, the bureau will take their word for it. Now it is up to you to prove to the bureau that the item was not correct. The law requires that the bureaus accept any proof you submit and pass any documentation you provide on to your creditor for consideration. If you did not submit all of the documentation you had the first time, be sure to send it all in the second time. You can also try disputing the listing again at a future time; you may get lucky and a different employee of the creditor may not be able to verify the item. The disputed listing was investigated as to the correctness of the information within the listing (such as the late pay notations) and the listing was found to be inaccurate or unverifiable. Remember, if the creditor doesn t respond to the bureau at all, this is the same as the listing being unverifiable. In this case, the negative listing will now show up as a positive listing, or it will be deleted from the report all together. This is the best possible outcome. **If you are not getting the desired results from the credit bureaus, there is the possibility that your claims were misunderstood, mishandled, or overlooked by the representative. Fixing your credit takes time. Going on your computer and protesting online may expedite the process. Tips for resubmitting your credit report disputes 5 P a g e
Be persistent - Become more insistent, but not threatening, with each dispute. As you submit one dispute after another, it may become increasingly difficult to get the checker to initiate the investigation. Your first one or two disputes should be friendly and polite. Just like any other consumer, you can become increasingly frustrated as time passes. You may threaten to hire an attorney. You may threaten to complain to the FTC, etc., but don t overdo it. Be creative - Create and utilize other techniques that help further the idea that the dispute letter is from a truly wronged and disadvantaged consumer. The checker is only interested in investigating disputes that truly are erroneous and damaging. The agencies are flooded with requests, and they tend to give priority to those that seem most urgent. Do not bombard the agencies with disputes (about the same listing, that is). Sending one dispute after another is wasteful and counterproductive. The rule of thumb is to wait 60 days between disputes of the same listing. What if a removed negative item comes back on my credit report? This is actually becoming more commonplace: since the new credit laws require that the bureaus investigate and resolve your disputes within 30 days, they will sometimes remove the negative information temporarily until they receive the information verified as true. Then they will put back any information verified to be true and notify you of this. By law, they can do this, but they have to notify you in writing. 6 P a g e
Sample credit dispute letter: *****Insert Bureau Address Here***** RE: Request for Deletions of Inaccurate Credit Information Name: Current Address: Social Security Number: Date of Birth: To whom it may concern: I have received a copy of my credit report and find the following items to be in error. Attached is a copy of my credit report. Item and Account Number: Nature of Dispute: Item and Account Number: Nature of Dispute: By the provisions of Section 611 of the Fair Credit and Reporting Act of 1970, I request that these items be deleted from all current and future credit reports. Pursuant to Section 611(d) of The Fair Credit and Reporting Act, please send notification that these items have been deleted. Please send an updated credit report to my address that is listed above. Respectfully, X 7 P a g e