Many consumers are under the impression there is nothing that can be done to change the information on their credit reports. Thankfully, this is not true. Federal law gives you the right to have misinformation on your credit reports corrected. You are ultimately responsible for assuring that your credit reports accurately represent your behavior as a consumer.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) gives you the right to contact credit bureaus directly and dispute items on your credit reports. You can dispute any and all items that are inaccurate, untimely, misleading, biased, incomplete or unverifiable (questionable items). If the bureaus cannot verify that the information on their reports is indeed correct, then those items must be deleted.

The credit system may seem like a private conversation between your creditors and the credit bureaus, but this conversation is not complete until you have joined it. You have the right to question any information on your credit reports that you feel may be inaccurate, untimely, misleading, incomplete, ambiguous, unverifiable, biased or unclear (“questionable.") If an item cannot be verified, then it must be removed.

While these laws give you a way to address credit issues on your own, acting on them takes more than a letter, a stamp and crossed fingers, it takes experience and perseverance. Many who try to repair their own credit are discouraged by a series of road blocks that lead them to end their fight for fair credit in frustration and despair.

Taking action on your credit is not only possible, we make it easy. Ever since the Fair Credit Reporting Act made credit repair possible, creditors have been working to make it complicated and difficult. Their years of experience fighting for consumers have helped them develop a vast arsenal of tools and strategies to make things easier for you — the way it should be.

Simple Stages

Stage 4: Sit back and relax.

A disputed credit listing must be accurate, timely and verifiable for it to remain on the credit report. If the credit listing is only somewhat inaccurate, the credit bureau may simply change the item to reflect the accurate status. Very often, though, disputed credit items cannot be verified: the creditor either no longer possesses the information or does not wish to go to the trouble of verifying it. Also, the reinvestigation must be completed within 30 days, though the credit bureaus do not always meet this deadline, or the listing must be removed. For these reasons, properly disputed questionable credit listings have been removed with remarkable frequency.

The normal service of these credit repair companies utilizes targeted disputes based upon the Fair Credit Reporting Act in order to delete inaccurate, untimely, misleading or unverified information from your credit reports. They also have different service levels which incorporate additional strategies based on other consumer protection statutes.

At the conclusion of the credit bureau's investigation, a new copy of the credit report should be sent to your home along with any deletions or improvements. If you are still not satisfied that the questionable, negative credit has been resolved, the cycle will begin again.

WHAT DOES A LOW CREDIT SCORE COST YOU:

Their regular service utilizes targeted disputes based upon the Fair Credit Reporting Act in order to delete inaccurate, untimely, misleading or unverified information from your credit reports.

With each service level, you can question items you wish to dispute, and how you want them disputed. Once we've received your credit reports, they will prepare the appropriate intervention or dispute letters. The dispute letters are designed to communicate your dispute in such a way that the credit bureaus will accept the dispute and conduct an investigation. The other service levels add interventions such as escalated account investigations, goodwill interventions, formal requests for debt validation, and monthly score analyses.