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.

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Credit secrets are closely guarded by inside professionals. I think everybody should know about these tricks of the trade

 

I have compiled all the insider tips and dirty secrets the credit reporting agencies don’t want you to know about . 

 

 If you are serious about ways to increase your credit score, learn these insider tips.

 

 

 

As a credit professional  in the credit trade , I see all types of people and their credit reports  . Mostly they are negative aspects of credit , but most people can do very simple things to improve their credit scores. These tips are not hard, but you do have to pay attention to how you spend and how you pay your bills.

 

Insider Secret #1 

 

To begin  the exercise of credit repair by writing a dispute letter. If that does not work you have to call the credit card company  . It’s proven that after writing a dispute letter, the best way to remove accurate information from your credit report is to negotiate directly with the company who is reporting it . You can make two very compelling cases for removal: 

 

1. payment in full by installments 

2. partial but immediate payment 

 

Using a Credit Repair Service costs you money and time . If you exhaust the dispute processdeal directly with the lender. Do so yourself instead of using an outside source. 

 

 

 

Insider Secret # 2 

 

If you strike out with the credit reporting agencies , you have the right to have a consumer statement added to your credit report. Only do this as a last resort and only after you have exhausted all means of disputing, including direct negotiation with the company reporting on the status of your account. The consumer statement you insert into your credit report is supposed to be sent to anyone who requests your report. I find this is effective only with employment or housing as loans are score driven .  

 

Insider Secret #3 

 

Is it possible that you are only a signor on an account?   For instance, a married couple shares a charge card account  , but the card was issued in the wife’s name. The other might have use privileges and may have even been responsible for running up the debt , but he is not responsible for that debt and the account should not be on his or her credit report if negative information is being reported. The inverse effect is also possible and this may in fact be helping your credit . 

 

Insider Secret # 4 

 

The other way to deletion is through time . The Fair Credit Reporting Act specifically outlines the term limit for charge-offs, late payments, tax liens and judgements. After 7 years these items must be removed from your credit report. But many times you have to go in and do this work. The statute of limitations for a Bankruptcy is 10 years. Comb through your credit report and dispute every negative entry that is older than 7 years. You will be surprised how many accounts you can accomplish and how many points you can add . 

 

Insider Secret # 5 

 

Credit Reporting Agencies have 30 days from the time when they receive your dispute, to respond to you . If they are not able to complete their investigation within that time , they are required by provisions in the Fair Credit Reporting Act, to delete the negative remarks  from your credit report. (Bankruptcy is 10 years). 

 

If you are to be successful in pursuing credit repair in this manner  , give yourself the best chance of success by following two basic rules (6 & 7). 

 

Inside Secrets #6 

 

Always include a copy of your drivers license or other identification showing you are indeed the petitioner. The FCRA allows for fines and imprisonment to employees of the Credit Reporting Agencies who violate privacy policies and give your credit information to just anybody. If you don’t comply with their identification process, you will not be given an investigation. 

 

Inside Secrets #7 

 

Knowing the Credit Reporting Agencies have 30 days to complete their investigation, always send correspondence to the Credit Reporting Agency by certified mail-return receipt required. This insignificant charge you incur  will be worth a lot if you are required to prove that the 30 day statute was violated. Keep copies  and follow up on the 31st day . 

 

Inside Secrets # 8 

Get a secured Credit Card and never charge more than thirty percent of the credit limit . This limit will be the amount of money you deposit with the lender . Pay the balance in full faithfully every month and do not be late. You will soon see that you will increase your credit scores and you may see offers of more credit arriving in the mail . 

 

Inside Secrets # 9 

Closing old accounts usually lowers your credit score . If you have old credit card accounts which you don’t use, leave them open as it effects the credit balance ratio, a critical number for your success  and this is one way to keep your scores up. Closing these accounts lowers your available balance. There are time when closing accounts is a good idea and this is usually when you move and don’t alert the card company. If you close an account make sure you are the one who invokes this and not the lender. Check your credit report making sure a notation is “closed by account holder.” 

 

Inside Secrets #10 

Pay your bills early. Credit scores are partially a result of a ratio between credit available and credit used. The trick is to stay in the thirty percent range of credit used and this can be accomplished by simply paying your bills early-before the reporting period. Late pay means late fees and this is just another way for credit card companies to extort money from you . Pay them early. After all, it’snot your money  .

 

 


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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


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If you want to fix your credit score, you might consider start searching for a really good online credit analysis that will take you inside your credit report. What does this mean to you? How in the world do you go into depth with a credit report? 

 

First of all have you see a credit file lately? Given, they are much better than in the past, but they’re still not very consumer friendly. My Transunion credit report that I pulled recently has so much information crammed into modest areas, you literally need brain food  a very serious mindset before sitting down to read this credit file. 

 

Experian has done much better than the others . Their FICO credit model is easier to read, but in many cases the report is like scrambled eggs . The way they assemble  the report is confusing. Page two jumps to page 8 and I finally figured out that it can’t be printed all at the same time.

 

Equifax is similar to Transunion. Their credit report is a tragedy jumbled grouping of jumbled characters and codes, making it impossible for a quick preview. If you spend any time at all with these credit reports, you’ll begin to understand why it is so difficult to maneuver. Do you have any idea why this is? Maybe this is not a mistake after all.

 

The Fair Credit Reporting Act, FCRA, was instituted to protect consumers against inequitable credit practices. Namely, from reporting errors that are considerable among credit reports. The FCRA allows for consumers to dispute errors in their credit file if they are erroneous not reflected as correct . 

 

That being said, there is a letter writing dispute opportunity  crucial for this to happen, but the key is that the credit reporting agencies have thirty days to verify the remark is being reported as proper. They do this by contacting the lender of the account and asking to check the credit history and make any corrections necessary.

 

Do you think that if credit reports were simple to read, it would increase drastically the number of dispute letters? Do you think that if consumers knew what the codes really meant they would immediately seize what is right or incorrect in their credit file?

 

Now that you understand this , if credit reports were easy to read and you could easily understand what you have, do you think the credit reporting agencies would suffer an onslaught of dispute letters costing them millions of dollars in work related verifications? Remember, they have 30 days to complete any investigation you request.

 

This is the single most crucial reason I believe consumers should use a credit repair software. After all, who knows how to go to the fundamentals of a credit report? Do you know all the codes and the terms they use to confuse you? Do you know where to send a credit dispute letter? Do you know how to write an appropriate letter requesting account validations?

 

The answer is probably not because if you know all this codes, you are not spending enough time living. Remember, credit reporting agencies are in business to serve lenders. They sell consumer information and have huge data files on us -what they spend, how much and where we like to shop . Do you really believe they are going to make it easy for you or is their allegiance to their customer or to the credit card companies?

Remember, that your ability to understand a fix your credit reporting errors is directly proportional to the amount of money you have left over each month .


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