Legal Credit Manipulation Secrets

Your credit report is increasingly vital to the quality of your life and your pursuit of happiness. This article will look at ways to dispute credit report and get negative information removed.

Why is your report so important? Well, Not only does it affect whether or not you will get a loan or insurance, and at what rate, but more employers are using as one of their hiring criteria. Also, in this day and age of identity theft, someone could be out there using your information to do all sorts of things including committing crimes.

The first thing you need to do is to get a copy of your credit report. Creditors, except mortgage companies, will not let you get a copy of your report.

You are entitled by law to get one credit report from each of the three major credit reporting bureaus. You can get all the three reports at AnnualCreditReport.com. You are also entitled to a free credit report if you have been denied credit within the last six months.

Next, go through each of your reports with a fine-toothed comb. You will be looking for errors, which are surprisingly common. Look for changed dates and account numbers, missing creditors’ names, and incorrect balances and limits.

Now here is a biggie. Debt collectors are know for changing the date of last action (DLA) on accounts and then re-report them. This is called re-aging and is illegal and very good ground for dispute.

If you find more than one error or impropriety (as in a change of DLA) on one account, do not dispute them all at the same time. Do it one at a time. This leaves you room for more disputes in case the first one fails.

One mistake consumers make is to request “verification” of a debt. You will be lucky if your dispute is not thrown out the window as “frivolous” if you do this. Also, mere verification can easily be done.

The right thing to do is point out what is wrong and ask for a deletion. And don’t go quoting statutes, unless you are working with a lawyer.

Another mistake consumers make is copy dispute letters off books or the Internet. These get flagged right away as hundreds of similar letters arrive at bureaus’ desks every day. You can use those letters as templates, but change the words into your own.

Whom to write to? You can choose to dispute with creditors/collectors or the credit bureaus. But most experts agree that it is better to place the burden of proof on the bureaus.

And don’t go disputing accounts that are in good standing, even with mistakes. Why? These too could get deleted, negatively impacting your history and score.