Can You Repair Your Credit?

Yes this is possible to accomplish, as consumers have cleared up a few blemishes on their reports. Many consumers might not realize that you can do this yourself. We know, of course, that sometimes people feel overwhelmed with the process and want to ask a live person a question if they get stumped. If you do, you can consult a credit repair counselor.

The information contained in this article is intended to help you to fix errors on your credit report and to clean up those “questionable” items. While no one can legally remove accurate negative information from a credit report, the law does allow you to request a reinvestigation of information in your file that you dispute as inaccurate or incomplete. On the other hand, it is perfectly legal to challenge anything on your credit report. There is no charge for requesting an investigation. The whole key to the credit repair procedure is that if the credit bureaus cannot verify information on your credit report, they must remove it. For instance, if a credit bureau cannot contact a collection agency which is reporting a collection on your report, they cannot verify the information, and the credit bureau must delete the entry.

Basic Credit Repair Strategy

The basic strategy to repairing your credit is as follows:

1. Get and review your credit report.
2. Analyze your report.
3. Make a list of all items you consider to be questionable or negative. Clearly identify each item in your report that you dispute, and explain why you dispute the information.
4. Write a dispute letter to the credit bureaus.
5. Send the letter to the credit bureaus. Make sure you send it registered or certified mail.
6. Document your efforts. Record when you sent your letters, and the results.
7. Wait for the bureaus to investigate your claims.
8. Analyze the results.
9. Repeat.
10. Specialized techniques: was the item deleted or changed to your satisfaction? You may continue steps 1, 2 and 3 above until you feel the dispute is settled satisfactorily. Remember, there is no charge for a reinvestigation. If you don’t get the results you want, dispute the listing again.
11. Research free sample letters online.

That’s all there is to it. Seems easy enough but you must have patience, because the credit bureaus are not always very cooperative. They make their money by providing credit reports to lenders not by fixing bad information in their databases.