A credit repair letter is the consumers' method of challenging and removing a negative item from their credit report. This letter is also commonly referred to as a dispute letter. This letter informs the credit bureaus that a mark is incorrect. The credit bureaus upon receipt of your letter will begin an investigation. A letter must be sent to each credit bureau that shows the disputed mark on your credit report. In your letter you must give the specifics about the listing. This includes why the listing is incorrect and should be deleted. Reasons often include; account is paid in full, item is out of date, reporting the wrong account balance and more. Congress passed the Fair Credit Reporting Act to help protect you from the credit bureaus. This law forces the bureaus to investigate a dispute and remove any inaccurate or unverifiable listing from your credit report. Consumers had no method of removing a negative item from their credit before this law. The difficult part of disputing a mark is getting the credit bureaus to deem your dispute letter valid. The way it works is the credit bureau will spend money that would otherwise be profit investigating disputes. Thus the credit bureaus will avoid conducting an investigation and do this through stall tactics. These stall tactics are in place to frustrate you and force you into giving up on the dispute process. It is common for bureaus to respond to a dispute letter with another letter that requests more information about the listing. You should also be aware that the 100 word statement serves no benefit to you. This is a statement that you can place on your credit report next to a negative mark. In past this was a place you could explain the circumstances behind a negative listing such as a sickness in the family, job loss, natural disaster... however now doing this only admits your guilt. This will cause the credit bureaus to deem any future dispute letters as frivolous and they will be ignored. Thus you have no way of removing the negative mark and it will damage your credit score for years to come. Negative listings can be removed; you just need to be persistent and patient. I would suggest looking into a credit repair service if you have multiple negative listings on your credit report.
That was then, this is now and these letters are a waste of time, so are the credit repair companies that use them.
One of its provisions states that a consumer may request in writing validation, or proof of any debt with the Credit Reporting Agencies (CRA's). They then have 30 days to prove the debts accuracy. If they cannot provide the necessary proof in the given time frame, the debt has to be deleted from your credit report. Sounds easy right?
As you can imagine 30 days is not a long time to gather the necessary documents when you consider CRA's are responsible for millions of account files.
It didn't take long for opportunists masquerading as credit repair agencies to surface capitalizing on this loophole. For a while it worked and the concept was simple yet affective. A full frontal attack on the credit bureaus and the strategy was an overwhelming amount of dispute letters, so many that the credit bureaus had no chance of responding in time. As a result, millions of trade lines were deleted. They still are today, just not nearly as effectively as they once were.
This abuse of the system forced CRA's to create systems that allowed them quickly verify debts. They did, and can now verify debts in a matter of minutes. Can you blame them? Not only is this method outdated and ineffective, it makes your situation worse.
Once a debt has been verified, any further attempts of the same debt become near impossible and that applies to legitimate inaccuracies. Had it been disputed properly, and for valid reason, there's a great chance it would have come off legally and permanently the first time.
If you believe anything, believe us when we say these dispute letters are that last method in which you want to repair your credit. It doesn't take a whole lot of common sense to realize Credit Bureaus, collection agents or the original creditors are not going to let millions of people dodge debts over a relatively minor detail like this.
The key to successful credit repair whether it is on your own, or choosing a legitimate company to do it for you, is research. Nearly every single credit report we see, has some form of violation of your rights committed by collection agents.
Learn the FCRA & The FDCPA and you will find the violations. Find them and the debts will come off legally and permanently.
Why Credit Repair Mills Stink: When credit repair was new, it was easy. You wrote a letter to the credit agencies "disputing" items you wanted removed. They had 30 days to verify the debts and if they couldn't do it in time, the item had to be removed. Sounds easy don't it?
So what's wrong with this method today? As you can imagine that cost creditors millions. As a result, they created systems to quickly verify debts and once they do, further disputes are considered frivolous and returned un-investigated. Can you blame them?
I'm sure we can agree that common sense dictates the following; if all that is required of credit bureaus is to respond to these letters in 30 days, you can bet they will. With the exception of a few that slip through the cracks, (the hope of other credit repair companies) your letters will be answered and your job harder.
To error is human - To capitalize on error is smart! As we discussed previously, credit bureaus validation system is completely automated. What's not automated is the method in which your credit history is input into the system. It is put in by hand, by humans and we all know the phrase "human error." This is the best kept secret of credit repair. If something is erroneous, it will come off permanently and you could even be awarded damages.
Think about it. What makes more sense, trickery, luck and relying on loopholes, or violations of your rights where the law is there to protect you?
It's easy to spot a company that depends on these credit repair letters. Look at their sign up process. If it instructs you to send them your credit reports, tell them which items to dispute and that they do the rest, save your money and do it yourself.
Think about it, if they know nothing about your alleged debts, what more could they possibly do then send the old generic "this is not my debt, please delete it" letter? You might as well just send that worthless letter yourself and save yourself the money.
The Bottom Line... Credit repair works and as long as consumers have the legal right to question items on their credit, it always will. What doesn't work is the tired methods these so called credit experts are charging you for. There is no secret and no magic letter.
To effectively repair your credit, you need to arm yourself with information and you need a lot of patience.
Both John Cooper & Marc Chase are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.