The laws concerning credit repair vary from state to state Therefore, consumers can legally repair their credit through methods that comply with the laws of their state.
Dealing with bad credit can be so annoying. It shuts funding opportunities and complicates, or in some cases even eliminates, the ability to rent an apartment, get a cell phone plan, etc. Though the bad credit remains with you for as long as possible, there are legal methods through which one can remove negative entries and boost the credit rating.
Dispute Inaccurate Information
This is true, if you find any wrong information in your credit report from any of the three credit bureau companies Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, you have all the legal right to challenge that. This is the quickest and most effective way of deleting items, which would not necessarily have any place in your report.
You can dispute information like:
- Such accounts that are not yours or those that you do not have any business dealing with.
- Insufficient account information – for instance, have an account that you coded as open but was closed
- Late payments – the payments you were not late to make but are considered so by the system
- Incorrect balances owed
- The activity of reporting duplicate accounts
To dispute inaccurate credit report information:
1. It is also important to remember to get your free annual credit reports from www.annualcreditreport.com and check all the items properly.
2. Be aware of any manipulations such as false or misleading information. Make sure to gather any evidence that you have with regards to your disputes such for instance bank statements of payment.
3. Send dispute letters to all three credit bureaus claiming that the released information is fake. For each item, it shall be clearly stated and the reasons for its inaccuracy be highlighted.
The credit bureaus are legally obligated to investigate the dispute you file within 30-45 days. If they cannot prove that the information in contention is correct, they have to delete the items from your credit reports. It can add to a nice increase in credit scores which is always a plus for the lender.
Negotiate Pay-for-Delete Agreements
A collections account or a late payment are examples of what you need to remove that cannot be done by filing disputes. You can legally cleanse them by paying off your creditors and collectors through pay-for-delete deals.
Pay-for-delete goes hand in hand with an agreement where one offers to pay off a certain amount of money for the debt collector to delete the amount from the credit reports. Most creditors and collectors will agree to this because they are more than willing to recover what has been owed.
Tips for negotiating pay-for-delete:
Always make sure that you have agreed with a person before doing any business by writing. One can observe that verbal agreements are not enforceable and tend to fail soon after one of the parties pays the debt.
- First of all, you could just ask the creditors nicely if they would accept pay-for-delete. If they decline at first, then it is recommended to make a token payment to make a renewed attempt.
- Original creditors may initially be more inclined to report debts to a third-party debt collector as they are more likely to accept pay-for-delete.
- Do not make payments or discuss your debts with the credit reporting companies in writing until you are sure that you have a pay-for-delete agreement. This starts statutes of limitation for legal collection.
Still, pay-for-delete arrangements make sense since they result in the actual removal of negative items because pay-for-delete requires that the creditors execute agreements for the deletion. Remember, all the agreements and account numbers should be well documented before paying debts.
Wait Out the Clock
Still, even when no dispute and negotiation is necessary, the negative information will automatically fall off your credit reports on its own through credit report statutes of limitation.
Here is the time limit that various accounts can legally remain on your credit reports:
Slow Payments – 7 years
Credit Report Records – Bankruptcy records – 7 to 10 years
Mer served as a consultant for the following: Foreclosures – 7 years
Repossessions - 7 years
Collections Accounts – 7 years from the date the account was first reported to be delinquent, not the date it was sent to collections.
Civil Judgments – The claimant has up to 7 years to file the case or up to the discovery of the statute of limitations in the state.
Inquiries - Two years
Criminal convictions – Although no specific statute of limitations has been documented, it is highly likely that they will not endure indefinitely.
In other words, if there is any questionable item that has been reported on your report, the credit bureaus are legally entitled not to report on it if it is very old. This is so because even the age alone in the scenario where you challenge the validity of the accounts is sufficient for its removal. No pay-for-delete negotiations are necessary.
This strategy takes time and should not introduce any new negative feedback that would reset the counter again, but what is clear is that everybody gets there in the end. Credit can be cleaned to zero within 7-10 years simply by doing nothing about this score and therefore legally one can delete even the worst credit.
That is why before trying to attempt credit repair with the help of more or less questionable and more aggressive action, such as filing wrongful identity theft reports or requesting Polybrite credit profiles that are, in fact, fake, it is better to consult with a financial expert. Avoid risky ways of boosting your credit to avoid getting a legal issue that will further harm your credit rating.
Call now for expert credit repair services: (888) 803-7889
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