In order to remove charge offs from your credit report you must dispute the listing with the credit bureaus. This is done by sending a credit repair letter to the credit bureaus.



In your credit repair letter you should explain why the listing is incorrect. For example the account has never been paid late, it's not your account or information is wrong.

The way our credit system works is you are guilty until you prove your innocence. What I mean is the incorrect information is true until you prove otherwise.

In response to incorrect information being reported congress passed the Fair Credit Reporting Act. This says that any listing that can not be verified must be removed from your credit report by the credit bureau.

It is common for one charged off account to turn into numerous negative listings and a bad credit score. I will explain the process of what happens to an account once the lender reports it as a charge off.

The original lender will take the outstanding debt and will sell it to a collection agency. This collection agency will try to collect on the debt. If they are unsuccessful they will be able to create a negative listing on your credit report.

Then the collection agency will turn around and sell your debt to another collection agency. This new collection agency will be able to report a negative listing if they are unsuccessful in collecting payment.

This process will continue through any number of collection agencies. It depends upon the size of the delinquent account. You can see how one account can ruin your credit score and turn into multiple negative listings.

If you have many negative listings it will cause your score to go way down. It will also be difficult to get approved for new lines of credit.

I recommend disputing the charged off listing before you take steps to pay it. This is because just by paying the charge off does not mean it will remove all the negative listings.