It’s estimated that as many as 25% of credit reports contain information that is not only wrong, but negatively impacting a credit score. Often, by the time a consumer realizes their credit score is lower than it should be, they have already been refused a loan or additional lines of credit.
Review your credit report regularly and look for negative listings that don’t belong. Until you do, it will be very difficult to fix credit. The following types of negative credit report listings can be disputed by contacting both the creditors and the credit reporting bureaus.
Fix Inaccurate negative listings
Identify theft, data entry error, and incorrect reporting can all result in negative listings on your credit report. Any error, even an incorrect address or phone number, should be investigated and disputed.
Fix untimely negative listings
Of course, once you pay off a debt it won’t disappear from your credit report right away. It usually takes 4-6 weeks for account balances on your credit report to be updated. If several months go by and the listing is still there, contact both the creditor and the credit reporting bureaus to fix it. Credit scoring is often very sensitive to this kind of credit reporting.
Some listings can remain on your credit report for years. For example, if you had a charge off listed on your report, then it could take up to seven years for that listing to be removed. Keep a close watch on every negative listing and make sure it’s removed in a timely manner. A credit repair service would be able to tell you how long a negative listing can legally remain on your report and help you repair credit.
Fix misleading negative listings
Let’s say your credit report lists a late payment of 60 or more days, and you know for a fact that you did miss one payment, but not two. While this listing is not completely inaccurate, it is misleading and is interfering with your efforts to repair credit. Dispute a credit report listing that is even partially incorrect.
Fix incomplete credit listings
Does one of the listings on your credit report only contain half of the facts? If a date, an amount, a name, or any other piece of information is only partly explained, dispute the item to be sure it’s absolutely accurate. If it’s successfully disputed, then you’ll make progress in repairing your credit.
Fix unverifiable negative listings
If you have no record of an outstanding bill or loan and are confident that the negative credit listing on your credit report does not belong to you, dispute it to fix credit.
Fix ambiguous, biased, or unclear (“questionable”) negative listings
Every listing on your credit report should be clear. If one of the listings doesn’t make sense to you, call to find out more. There’s a chance that the listing is unclear to potential creditors, too. Remember, the first step to fix credit is to make sure all the listings on your credit report are, in accordance with consumer protection statutes, both fair and accurate.