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 Reasons often include; account is paid in full, item is out of date, reporting the wrong account balance and more.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.