How You Can Dispute Your Credit Report

To remove negative marks on your credit report you must dispute the credit bureaus. You have two methods to do this.

1. Craft a dispute letter

This option will require you to write a dispute letter. In this letter you will need to identify the negative mark and provide and explanation as to why it is inaccurate.

Reasons often include; not my account, amount is wrong, item is out of date and etcetera. You must send this letter to each credit bureau.

2. Hire a professional credit repair firm.

With this option the company will write the dispute letter for you and mail it to the credit bureaus. The advantage of a company is they have advanced dispute techniques such as; escalated dispute information requests, debt validation, and creditor direct intervention.

I suggest a firm if you have multiple negative marks on your credit report. However if you only have one mark then I suggest do it yourself credit repair.

Upon receipt of your "valid" dispute letter the bureaus will hold an investigation. If the negative mark can not be verified then the bureaus must remove it from your credit history.

Be aware that often bureaus will use stall tactics to avoid holding an investigation. This is a result of bureaus only spending potential profits when they conduct an investigation.

However the Fair Credit Reporting Act states that the bureaus must investigate disputes and if found unverifiable the listing must be removed. The hard part is getting the bureaus to deem you dispute letter valid.

If you are experiencing trouble with this I recommend hiring a professional. However you can get the bureaus to deem you letter valid with some persistence.

It is common for investigations to result in removal of negative marks. This is because many lenders are unwilling to spend the time and money to verify a debt.

However you decide to dispute your credit, negative marks can be deleted. You do not have to wait the full seven years for these marks to be removed.