Fix Bad Credit
January 15th, 2009. Published under Credit. No Comments.
You do not have to just wait for negative marks on your credit report to fall off. You can remove them and improve your credit score.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act says that you can dispute any item that you do not believe to be accurate on your credit report. It also says that any item that can not be verified must be removed from your credit.
You can dispute an item through the dispute process. This is done yourself by writing a dispute letter or you can hire a service to dispute items on your behalf.
The bureau will receive your dispute and investigate. They will contact the lender and ask them to verify the dates on the account and the balance.
However if the creditor does not verify the account then the item must be removed from your report. It has been learned that once a charge off, repossession, and late payment have aged 2 years there is a high success rate that they will not be verified by the creditor.
After two years the lender has received some form of payment. For example with a charged off credit card account the debt has been sold to a collection agency, and the lender has no need to save any record of your account.
This account will be deleted when disputed. It is more difficult to remove; judgments, tax liens, recent bankruptcies and recent delinquent accounts. This is when having a service to dispute your credit can be very helpful.
A service can use more advanced methods to remove an item if it is verified by the lender. A service can use; creditor direct intervention, escalated dispute information requests, and debt validation.
You can also help your credit score by opening a revolving unsecured credit line. This will help your score because you can create a positive payment history and improve your ratio of debt to available credit.
In sum do not wait to repair your credit score. You can remove bad credit items and improve your score today.