Dispute Bad Credit – Identifying And Eliminating Questionable Negative Credit Items
If you’re paying high interest rates on your loans, or have experienced being declined a loan application, you need to get hold of your credit report and take proactive steps to improve your credit score.
You are entitled to get a free copy of your credit report once a year from the three national credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. After you’ve requested and gotten your copies, you need to analyze the information in the reports. It’s a good idea to make copies of the original reports for you to use in highlighting and note-taking. Highlight all the negative items in your credit reports. You would need to look for the key to be able to decode the symbols used in the reports. Here are some pointers on identifying the negative items:
In your Equifax and TransUnion reports, the negative items would have ratings higher than I1, M1, or R1. You will also see the characters “>>>” before or after the negative items. The negative items would have any of the following labels: Repossession; Foreclosure; Write-off; Charge-off; Settled; Included in bankruptcy; Collection amounts; Court accounts such as liens, judgments, divorce, bankruptcy chapters 11, 7, or 13; Late payments; Inquiries.
In your Experian credit report, all negative items would be marked by an asterisk. Any credit inquiries are also considered negative.
Go over all your highlighted negative items and determine the ones which are inaccurate or inconsistent. Some common errors are listings that do not belong to you, a wrong balance, or obsolete information.
The next step would be to draft your credit dispute letter. It is important for you to clearly communicate what you are disputing and why you believe the items are inaccurate. If you fail to communicate these clearly, the credit bureaus will just return your letter to you.
You also need to inform the bureau on what action you wish them to take regarding the inaccurate information. For example, you might ask them to erase a late payment notation or to delete an item completely.
Back up your dispute with documentation such as payment records and court documents. Include a list of the documents in the letter, and enclose copies of these documents with the letter. It is also a good idea to include a copy of your credit report with the negative inaccurate items highlighted.
