Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Bad Credit Repair

By John Cooper

If you have bad credit there is hope. You do not have to wait seven years for bad credit items to naturally fall off your credit report.

Congress passed the Fair Credit Reporting Act which gives you the right to dispute any item on your credit report. This act also says that if the item is not verified by the lender then the credit bureau must remove it from your report.

You can dispute an item through the dispute process. This is done yourself by writing a dispute letter or you can hire a service to dispute items on your behalf.

Once the bureaus get your letter they will investigate the dispute. They will contact the creator of the item and get them to verify the account, the account balance, and the dates on the account.

However if the creditor does not verify the account then the item must be removed from your report. It has been learned that once a charge off, repossession, and late payment have aged 2 years there is a high success rate that they will not be verified by the creditor.

This is because the creditor has gotten some form of payment for your debt. For example with a charged off credit card the creditor has sold your debt to a debt collector. Therefore the creditor has no reason to save records of your account.

Recent delinquent accounts, tax liens, judgments, and bankruptcies are more difficult to remove. If you have one of these marks then hiring a service is a good idea, because they have advanced dispute tactics.

When an item is verified a service can use advanced dispute techniques to dispute the item. These include; escalated dispute information requests, debt validation, and creditor direct intervention.

In addition it will help your credit score if you open a revolving line of unsecured credit. I suggest a bad credit credit card. This will help you build a positive payment history which is very important when your score is being calculated.

In sum, you should not wait seven years for credit repair to occur naturally. You can take steps today and rebuild your score. - 16036

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