Disputing Bad Credit Entries With the Credit Bureaus

You can request a free anual credit report from places such as Experian or Equifax very easily and the request can simply be made online. Once you receive your credit report, be prepared to see errors. It's well known that credit reports contain errors over 50% of the time. When you open a dispute on a derogatory item, your creditor has 30 days to respond by either providing proof or removing the derogatory status. For example, your creditors must be able to prove that you had a  Read More...

Disputing Bad Credit Entries With the Credit Bureaus

(Continued) late payment. Many large companies, like major department stores, actually lose information about late payments. If you call to dispute a late payment, the creditor is required to send a deletion letter to the credit reporting bureau. If your credit report shows late payments to a company that is has since gone into liquidation, dispute them in writing because the information is no longer verifiable or available. If you dispute these items in writing, the credit reporting agency will automatically remove them. Don't forget to look for any missing entries or information. You may have several good credit entries that were NOT reported by one of your creditors or lenders.

COMMON RESULTS of DISPUTES:

Negative entries are permanently removed from your credit report for the following reasons:

(1) Creditor did not keep proper records to verify their entry on reports.

(2) Creditor did not respond within their time period of 30 days, therefore the negative entry was removed. (This is why it is important to send the dispute form via registered post. Not only to insure its delivery, but to have documented time of when it was received. Your creditors are usually so overloaded with disputes, they almost never respond within the time frame required by law.)

(3) Debts were not significant enough to waste their time.

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