Fix Your Credit Report Part 2

4. Requesting Corrections and Disputing Your Credit

Challenge everything, and you should always request a complete deletion. You will have the toughest time getting bankruptcies and foreclosures off of your credit report as these things are so easy for the credit bureaus to verify. In the case of a bankruptcy, you most likely will have a few trade lines saying "included in Bankruptcy". If you want to challenge your bankruptcy, you need to clear off all credit lines mentioning a BK first.

5. Send all correspondence via registered or certified mail.
You have to be able to tell when letters were sent and received. It gives you proof with the CRAs if they fail to respond as required by law.

6. Document Your Credit Repair Efforts
Make an organized system to store and track your correspondences with the credit bureaus and your creditors. Keep copies and records of all correspondence you send and receive, and also notes on all telephone conversations. Telephone conversations with a creditor require that you document the conversation by recording the name of the person to whom you spoke, his or her position, the date and time of the conversation, what was said in the conversation, and what was agreed upon.

7. Wait for the credit bureau to finishing investigating
Once the credit reporting agency has received your dispute letter, they are obligated to investigate. This obligation is not contingent upon you having been denied credit. According to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the credit bureaus must take the following steps:

The credit reporting agencies must resolve consumers' disputes within 30 days limit
In response to consumers' complaints that documentation in support of their disputes was disregarded, the credit bureaus have to consider and transmit to the furnisher all relevant evidence submitted by the consumer the first time.Top...
 
Consumers will receive written notice of the results of the investigation within five days of its completion, including a copy of the amended credit file if it changed based on the dispute.
Once information is deleted from a credit file, the credit bureaus can not reinsert it unless the entity supplying the information certifies that the item is complete and accurate and the credit bureau notifies the consumer within five days.
 
The Federal Trade Commission says that inaccurate credit reports are the number-one source of consumer complaints, and that it is quite common for problems to take six or more months to be resolved. All of the big-three agencies are working on making sure that all disputes are handled within 30 days.

If the new investigation reveals an error, you may ask that a corrected version of the report be sent to anyone who received your report within the past six months. Job applicants can have corrected reports sent to anyone who received a report for employment purposes during the past two years. However, this is unlikely to repair any damage done when your credit report was first pulled, so don’t waste your time or energy on this approach.

8. Evaluate the results of your repair efforts.
When you get your “repaired” credit report back from the credit bureaus, they will summarize what changed on your credit report due to your challenges. You can compare this list to your own notes or just to the previous credit report.Top...

The results of each item will have been resolved in one of five different ways:

If the listing is not mentioned in the results list, you must have forgotten to include it, or your request was not sufficiently clear. You will need to dispute the item again in your next dispute letter. The bureaus are legally obligated to respond in writing within 30 days, so if they don't, it is highly unlike they are ignoring you.

The disputed item was investigated but verified. If you don’t get the item removed, most likely, the credit bureaus will have just given you a cryptic reason as to why like “item verified”. The creditor may have responded to the credit bureau's request for re-verification. 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 is not correct. The law required that the bureaus accept any proof you may submit, as well as to pass any documentation you provide on to your creditor for consideration, so be sure to send any documentation you can, if you didn’t do it the first time. You could also try disputing the listing again at a future time. Who knows, 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 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 your report all together. This is the best possible outcome.
If you are not getting the desired results from the credit bureaus Credit bureau disputes are not handled by computers, but by people, so the possibility that your claims was misunderstood, overlooked or mishandled is good. Fixing your credit takes time, and there is nothing you can do to expedite the process. However, you can always resubmit your claims.

For more on billing errors go here...
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