Playing The Credit Game, Disputing Credit Scores
OK, I just tried to refinance so I could lower my monthly payment and they say I don't have enough equity in the property to give me another loan and my credit score is a 501(he would like to see a 580) right now due to me screwing up years ago. He told to to Dispute a few of my credit problems with eqifax and if they didn't do something in 30 days they have to drop the bad points against me. Then with my score higher he said they could give me a better loan due to my better credit rating. So my question to you pros is when I call this place and dispute this claim against me what do I say, I mean why am I disputing should I only say certain things or can saying the wrong thing screw me? thanks alot guys. I need your help.
First find out what is wrong or what you want to dispute. Get a copy from the broker you were working with. Find the old items, lates from closed credit accounts or errors being reported. Follow-up on any collections you currently have and try to settle. If you have collections over 2 years old you may not want to reactivate them by paying them off. Draft letters to all three reporting agencies and mark at the top that this is for a mortgage. It will speed-up the process. Or call the agencies and get a fax number, much faster. In addition, there are companies out there that will clean up errors for a price, typically $15 per line on the report. This can get expensise but generally worth it.
yes I did request the credit report from the morgage broker I was talking to. As for the 2 year thing, it has been over 2 years since I've sent a payment to any of them (I know I'm a bad person). does this change what I can do?
You need to go to www.creditboards.com and read the post there before you do anything. Lots of information about Credit there, how you can correct and make worse by doing different things.
Creditboards is good and so is Credit info center www.creditinfocenter.com they both have some great info and a few letters to help you along. Good luck
Disputing legitimate credit entries on your credit report in the hopes of the reporting agency having to drop them if they can't verify them in 30 days is a bush league, amateur trick. It might have worked in the 80s but it doesn't work now.
If it is legitimate, it will be staying.
Keep in mind your guy didn't invent this trick, it has been around forever and the credit agencies have seen it a million times and deal with it every day.
They have computers now which will just pull up the correct documentation automatically and provide the verification, and that will be the end of it.
I have to disagree with you 110% Rehabinator. Have you tried disputing legitimate items on your credit report or are you passing on what was passed to you?
I disputed 10 items on my credit report that were "legitimate". 6 were removed, 3 have been cleared up and no longer report late payments and 1 has been stubborn. My credit score shot up. I did this with a law office that specializes in this.
Point blank, there is no saying that the company "HAS" to leave negative items on your credit report, that is at the sole discretion of the company, they can remove it anytime. It helps if you are making regular payments on outstanding bills, but many companies will remove a negative item if you pay it and ask them to.
This is coming from you someone who has been cleaning up her credit report for a year, nothing pseudo.
Dee
Quote:
On 2003-12-23 10:01, The-Rehabinator wrote:
Disputing legitimate credit entries on your credit report in the hopes of the reporting agency having to drop them if they can't verify them in 30 days is a bush league, amateur trick. It might have worked in the 80s but it doesn't work now.
If it is legitimate, it will be staying.
Nope. Did it with DW's reports and it was no bed of roses, but in 18 months or so we've gone from 14 baddies down to one each on EQ and TU, and many were valid, while others had at least some validity (EX's results are not in from this latest round of disputes, but I expect we'll be down to 1 or 2 over there ... at least a 50% success rate, although we're 5 out of 7 now with EQ and TU and expect to pick up the 6th and maybe the 7th with creative follow-up disputes). And those results were achieved with fairly long layoffs between dispute flurries. A rapid-fire attack might have accomplished all within 4-5 months.
As in all endeavors, persistence and creativity are the keys.
Anyone can do it themselves. You may not be able to get to the exact place you want to reach in the time frame you want to reach it, but you will be light years ahead of where you would be if you just sat there like credit roadkill. [ Edited by flacorps on Date 12/23/2003 ]
A Great Thread:
http://www.creditboards.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=19457
About a year ago I found two items on my report that were wrong. One was an old mortgage that was paid off in 1997 but still showed up as open with a big balance. The other was a hospital bill that was in collections but shouldn't have been because it had been paid off within 5 days of going to the collections. (they usually give you 30 days to pay before sending to the reporting agencies). Both of those items were corrected. Then I closed two credit card accounts that were so old that I didn't even know that I had them anymore. After the "cleanup" my score went up from 640 to 740. 640 is borderline for some mortgages and loans. With a 740 they will give you just about anything. Great improvement! You can dispute items on line through the eqifax website. They do have to be legit. They will tell you that some things have to stay on there for 7 years or 5 years or whatever. Doesn't matter if you are in good standing now. They have to stay on. It is my understanding that the further away you get from the "bad" credit item the less number value they assign it. Hope this helps.
Quote:They do have to be legit. They will tell you that some things have to stay on there for 7 years or 5 years or whatever. Doesn't matter if you are in good standing now. They have to stay on. It is my understanding that the further away you get from the "bad" credit item the less number value they assign it. Hope this helps.
Your dispute needn't be legitimate, and the item you're disputing needn't be invalid. Persistence and creativity can knock them off. And if they knock them off in error and later validly put them back--you usually can get them off for good because the credit reporting agency failed to send you a legally-required five-day notice that they were doing it.
As in court, procedure often trumps the merits of the matter. Become a procedure maven (and/or just a persistent pain in the ass) and you can prevail.
"THEY" are making this up. The Fair Credit Reporting Act says negative items MAY be reported for 7 years. It does NOT say they MUST be reported for 7 years. For that matter, it also says that positive items may be reported indefinitely - but the CRA's remove them after 10 years (sometimes sooner) - wonder why????
Quote:They will tell you that some things have to stay on there for 7 years or 5 years or whatever. Doesn't matter if you are in good standing now. They have to stay on. It is my understanding that the further away you get from the "bad" credit item the less number value they assign it. Hope this helps.
serenitybreeze,
Did you think that you should maybe ask that question the source of the cause?
serenitybreeze,
Did you think that you should maybe ask that question the source of the cause?