Credit repair: Way to improve your bad credit
Credit repair is the process by which you can remove the negative information from your credit report and improve bad credit. As per the Fair Credit Reporting Act, only correct information should stay in your credit report. However if there is any incorrect information, it can be removed because such information reduces your credit score. You can either repair your credit by yourself or sign up with credit repair agencies to repair your credit. However, the truth is that, there are credit repair agencies who do not deliver the service they promised and you end up paying dollars for their service with no positive outcome. Repairing your credit is not at all difficult and you can easily do it by yourself if you have the patience to do so. If you repair your own credit, it not only help you to put your credit in order, but also help you learn the basis about credit repair and the ways to maintain a good and positive credit profile.
To begin with credit repair, you first need to pull out your credit report from the credit bureaus and check whether there is any negative listing in your report or not. The negative listing can either be an outstanding debt listing or a hard inquiry listing. If the entries are correct, you can never remove these items from your report. Outstanding debts stay in your credit report for seven years and six months from the date of your first delinquency and hard inquiries stay in your credit report for two years.
However, you can remove negative debt listings from your credit report before the seven year period by making the creditor agree to pay for deletion agreement, so that as soon as you pay off the outstanding debt in full, the negative information gets removed from your report. Even if the creditor or the collection agency agrees to pay for deletion agreement, there are certain listings which can never be removed from your report. These include charge off, judgments and bankruptcies. Charge off and judgments stay in your credit report for seven years while bankruptcy may stay in your credit report for ten years.
If you find any creditor or collection agency listing against any outstanding debt in your credit report, you should first send a debt validation letter by certified mail with return receipt. As per the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the creditor or the collection agency to whom the letter is send, must validate the debt within 30 days from the date of receipt of your letter else they lose their right to collect the debt.
If they validate the debt, simply come to a repayment agreement and pay off the debt. However, before coming to a repayment agreement, you should try to make the creditor agree to PFD agreement, so as to get the items removed from your report soon after you repay the debt. However if they cannot validate the debt, send dispute letters to the credit bureaus telling them that you do not agree with the listing. The bureaus will verify it with the creditors and get them removed from your credit report.
Now, if you have a hard inquiry listing in your credit report, it can be removed if it is unauthorized. Fair Credit Reporting Act allows only authorized hard inquiry to get listed in your credit report. If you find any unauthorized hard inquiry listing, ask the inquirer by certified mail to verify your authorization. You should also ask them to remove the listing from your credit report if they cannot verify it. In most cases it is found that the creditors remove the listing from your report. finance or credit problem will be no more if you take a look at the information at this site, badcredit-repair.com
Useful Resources:
- House of Rapid Credit Repair – Find out how to repair your credit by yourself.
