Credit Repair Letter

A credit repair letter is the consumers' method of challenging and removing a negative item from their credit report. This letter is also commonly referred to as a dispute letter.

This letter is you way of telling the credit bureaus that a mark is incorrect. When your letter is received and deemed valid the credit bureaus will start an investigation into the mark. You must send a letter to each credit bureau that is reporting the negative mark.

In this letter you must provide the details about the mark. You must also state why this mark is inaccurate and should be removed, common reasons include; not my account, account is closed, account paid in full and many more.

Congress passed the Fair Credit Reporting Act to help protect you from the credit bureaus. This law forces the bureaus to investigate a dispute and remove any inaccurate or unverifiable listing from your credit report. Consumers had no method of removing a negative item from their credit before this law.

The brick wall that many people face is to get the credit bureau to deem your letter a "valid" dispute. This is because it will only cost the bureaus potential profits to conduct investigations.

Thus the credit bureaus will avoid conducting an investigation and do this through stall tactics. These stall tactics are in place to frustrate you and force you into giving up on the dispute process. It is common for bureaus to respond to a dispute letter with another letter that requests more information about the listing.

You should also realize that a 100 word statement on your credit report will not help you under any circumstances. This is a place where you can provide a brief statement next to a negative listing.

In the past this was used to explain what happened. However today if you fill in this statement you are only admitting guilt to the bureaus.

If you do this it will be next to impossible to ever remove this mark from your credit report. The credit bureaus will deem any future dispute letter challenging that mark as frivolous.

With patience and some organization you can have negative items removed from your credit report. However it is in your interest to consider a credit repair service if you have multiple negative marks on your reports.