It’s critical that you know how to write a dispute letter to the major credit reporting agencies. Do you understand what to say and how to phrase your complaint  to these companies who control your destiny through the scores they assign you  ?

You may not realize this , but there is no industry standard letter  written that will help you with a credit report repair procedure. With all the confusion and scammers  telling you how to repair bad credit, none of them will tell you that you can write a dispute letter yourself and it can be in plain language .

The first thing you have to do is to  obtain your reports  from Experian, Transunion and Equifax. These are the three major credit reporting agencies and they all have a different score labeling you as a dead beat, a good credit risk or trouble.

Clean up credit report by understanding that everything begins with the collection dispute. You have to be able to list your problems with your file and express why the reporting errors should be corrected . This is not difficult and you do not have to go into any long detail about your Uncle Tommy  stole the credit card and went on a buying spree .

All you have to do is note next to each account in question that the account is reported incorrectly . This information is incorrect, please remove it. Period and the end of the story .

The process takes thirty days once your request has been received and this is why it is a good idea to use certified mail so you can track this . If you have an account that has been assigned or sent to collection  , it is likely that your account is now in the hands of a collection agency and that is where you send your dispute letter.

An example would be if you neglected to pay a Citi credit card and after months of trying to collect, the lender is not successful. In that case the account is assigned to a collection agency.

Assigned is the same term for sold. The reason this is important to you is because you would no longer go to the lender to try to make a deal or to schedule payments or even to dispute the account.

Once the account is in collection , you are nearly out of options and except in a few instances, your best bet is to settle and cut a deal with the people trying to collect the debt  . If you are smart enough to settle or get some credit card forgiveness, then you will be attempting to correct your credit report mistakes with one of the three reporting agencies.

It is a good idea and it will save you lots of time   and what your chances are to settle or to make payments before the account goes bad.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • Twitter
  • Technorati
  • Live
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace
  • BlinkList
  • Diigo
  • email
  • Fark
  • Faves
  • FriendFeed
  • LinkaGoGo
  • MisterWong
  • Mixx
  • MSN Reporter
  • Ping.fm
  • Propeller
  • Simpy
  • Slashdot
  • Tumblr
  • Yahoo! Bookmarks

The recent worldwide financial crisis has seen a huge increase in the amount of people who cannot get credit because their credit score has plummeted. Once in that situation the first question they ask is “Is it possible to clean up my credit ?” to which the simple answer is yes. The question that follows on speedily after this is “how long will it take to increase my credit score?” The answer to this is “not as long as you may think.”

So if you are in the position of having applied for credit and being declined, here are some tips to quickly get your credit score up by about 50 points.

Firstly you need to get a copy of your credit report in order to see what kind of shape it’s in. You can do this by writing (enclosing the appropriate fee) to one or all three of the following – Experian, Equifax and Trans Union. Once you are in possession of your report you will be able to see the details of precisely who has placed a negative rating against your name. Once you have this information sit down and write a letter to each creditor and ask them to provide evidence that the accounts on which they are reporting genuinely belong to you, which will in turn mean that they must put a hold on the account while they search for the relevant information. Quite often, although by no means always, they will find this too much trouble, especially if they feel that this is a delinquent account that they have little chance of getting a return. If they cannot get or at least can’t be bothered to provide the proof, they must transfer the account from your credit report.

Ok, having dealt with some of the negative ratings it’s time to turn your attention on the lack of positive ratings. To do this take some time to look into all of the accounts that you have that are in good standing but are not showing up on your credit report, as often creditors who are more than eager to report bad credit, will not report good accounts. Once you have found these, write to them and remind them to record it against your credit report.

These are just a couple of things that you can do to easily raise your credit score without having to spend hundreds or indeed thousands of dollars engaging a credit repair agency. The important thing is that you must learn to educate yourself and learn how to take action. You do not need to have professional credit counselling agencies to negotiate with your creditors in order to have negative items removed from your credit report – you can do this yourself. Indeed in most cases your creditors will be happy to work along with you as they are more concerned in working with getting money from their current customers rather than wasting their time on past due accounts.


Related Blogs

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • Twitter
  • Technorati
  • Live
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace
  • BlinkList
  • Diigo
  • email
  • Fark
  • Faves
  • FriendFeed
  • LinkaGoGo
  • MisterWong
  • Mixx
  • MSN Reporter
  • Ping.fm
  • Propeller
  • Simpy
  • Slashdot
  • Tumblr
  • Yahoo! Bookmarks

Want to know how to improve your credit score? If you have bad credit, it doesn’t have to remain that way. Fact is, whatever your credit is like right now, you can improve it.

The worst thing you can do is give trust to the credit reporting agencies. I’ve yet to see one credit file that was perfect. Let’s go over some things you should do.

1. How do you go from bad credit to good credit? Click the link to see how a guy with tons of negative accounts removed them all legally.

2. Grab a free copy of your credit report here. Be prepared to see a lot of errors. At least now you know.

3. Hopefully, you’ll see all your good accounts listed. If not, that could be killing your credit score. You need to contact the CRA to get any “good” items put on. That guy above shows you how.

4. Paying off past collections can kill your credit for years. Again, that guy talks about this. Paying off collections accounts can make them very hard to remove.

5. Next, you’ll be disputing the validity of bad items. Contact the reporting agency about these issues and get them to verify the data.

6. Watch how much credit utilization you have. If your credit available from all credit cards is say $1,000 and your total balances equal say $800, you’re using 80% of your credit . That’s not good at all. Ideally, you want to keep your utilization under 30%. I’ve seen people lose over 90 points just from being over-utilized. That’s an astounding number.

7. Don’t apply for everything under the sun. “Hard pulls” can hurt your credit score, especially manual reviews. It looks like you’re just grasping at straws. It’s fine to apply for credit now and again, but don’t go applying for 5 credit cards in 10 minutes.

There’s a lot more you can do to repair credit and improve your credit score. Do yourself a favor and visit that guy’s site above.

Other —

MSN Money


Related Blogs

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • Twitter
  • Technorati
  • Live
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace
  • BlinkList
  • Diigo
  • email
  • Fark
  • Faves
  • FriendFeed
  • LinkaGoGo
  • MisterWong
  • Mixx
  • MSN Reporter
  • Ping.fm
  • Propeller
  • Simpy
  • Slashdot
  • Tumblr
  • Yahoo! Bookmarks

Americans haven’t seen an economy as miserable as the one that’s going on now. Jobs are unavailable, housing loans are sky high even if the price of houses itself is cheap; poor credit isn’t helping either, in getting loans.

There are a few ways to improve credit. One of these is debt consolidation. There are companies that will buy your debt by paying out your creditors, and even offer you a better interest rate and terms. This is called debt consolidation, and this is a good way to pay your debts from multiple creditors through one channel. Not only does this make the process easier, but also helps you by offering lower interest rates. If you have multiple debts, consider going to a debt consolidation company to make your payment process easier.

Another thing you should do is get rid of the excess credit cards you might have accumulated during the days of good times. The way to determine if you need a credit card is whether you are using half of the credit amount, on an average, every month.

The way to determine if you are over using or abusing a credit card is if you are going above the halfway line, or, even worse, just paying the interest every month and not being able to touch the capital. If the latter is the case, it is time to rethink your life and budget yourself to the limit.

Your credit score will go down if you have a large amount of outstanding debt, so make an effort to start paying off as much of your debt as you can, as soon as you can. Your credit score starts improving when there is positive movement in your debt payment, and once all or most of your debt is cleared, you will find it easier to get a loan for necessities like housing or education.

 
USA Residents Only


Related Blogs

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • Twitter
  • Technorati
  • Live
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace
  • BlinkList
  • Diigo
  • email
  • Fark
  • Faves
  • FriendFeed
  • LinkaGoGo
  • MisterWong
  • Mixx
  • MSN Reporter
  • Ping.fm
  • Propeller
  • Simpy
  • Slashdot
  • Tumblr
  • Yahoo! Bookmarks