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DISPUTING
"Disputing" is the method used in contacting the credit reporting agencies. It's your right to dispute the accuracy of negative information on your credit reports.
When you
write to the credit bureau, you are requesting that they re-investigate information on your credit reports which you feel are erroneous, misleading, outdated, inaccurate or are no longer verifiable. Once you
dispute your credit reports the bureau will have "a reasonable period of time" (approximately 4 to 6 weeks) to perform their re-investigation and respond back to you.
You will always use this method
when correcting your credit reports.
Even if you have received agreement from your creditor to remove an item from your report, you will still want to contact the bureau, in writing, to make sure it does get deleted.
When writing to the credit
bureaus to dispute items on your credit report you do not need to supply the bureau with a detailed explanation of the inaccuracy of the account. Short descriptions are all that is required. Sometimes
the credit reporting agency writes back and requests a detailed description of the reason for dispute and wants to know what it should describe. This is just one of their stalling tactics. There is no legal
requirement that you have to supply them with this detailed information. The law says that it's their responsibility to re-investigate the disputed information for accuracy and verification.
Examples of reasons given for disputing an item on your credit report:
Status date is incorrect.
Account status is incorrect.
Account history is inaccurate.
I do not recall being 30,60,90 days late.
Information is erroneous. Please remove this item from my report.
Creditor has agreed to delete this item. Please remove.
Creditor has agreed to upgrade this rating. Please correct and update.
This account is unverifiable. Please remove.
This is not my account. Please remove.
This account was paid in full as agreed.
This account is more than seven years old. Please remove.
It is not recommended that you lie when giving reasons for your dispute.
All you want to do is cause a re-investigation of the items listed.
Once you dispute any items on your credit report, the credit bureau will contact your creditor for verification and accuracy.
Most of the time they will allow up to 25 business days for your creditor to respond to their investigation. If your creditor does not respond in that period of time, the credit bureau will remove that item from your file. They will even remove current accounts if no response was received. This does not mean that the information will not re-appear on your report at a later date! Just because your creditor did not respond within the time period necessary, doesn't mean that your creditor has removed it from their files. The next time your creditor reports to the bureaus, the information may pop back on.
We do not recommend that you dispute all negative items on your credit report at the same time. If you do, the credit bureau may decide that your dispute is frivolous or irrelevant, and will not
respond.
You will find it very difficult in receiving a positive response when disputing inquiries on your credit report.
The federal law does not make any provisions stopping the credit bureaus from reporting this information.
We encourage you to write to your state Legislators and strongly recommend that they pass
legislation which will change this law.
Remember, credit bureaus may provide our files to virtually anyone without our permission. Not only may you find this an invasion of privacy, but is unfair because grantors use the amount of inquiries on your credit reports as one of their criteria for approving or denying you credit.
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