How To Get A Closed Account Off Your Credit Report?
How to Request a Closed Account to Be Taken Off Your Credit Report
This is quite damaging for credit scores and for people who have a closed account on their credit report. Even if you close an account deliberately it will appear like you open and close accounts in an instance, which is perceived as a risk by the lenders. Thankfully, it is possible to have closed accounts removed from a credit report in some situations. Here’s what to know.
Check Your Credit Reports The first of them is getting your copies of credit reports from Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. You can get three credit reports per year at no cost from annual credit report. com. Go through every account mentioned below and check whether the account is closed or not. Do not forget to remember the dates when the accounts were opened and closed. It will always help if there is an account that is beyond the legal reporting period that you feel should not be reported, if there is an account that is reported closed when you know it is still active, if there is a duplicate account or a fake account, then you may be able to get it removed.
Make Sure You Understand the Policies of Closed Accounts FCRA also provides guidelines on the period within which specific adverse items can be reported in your credit report. For closed accounts with no outstanding balance or late payments, the rules are:
Accounts with no evidence of overdue payment can remain in the system for up to 10 years from the closure of the account. For instance, if a credit card was closed in June 2015 it ought not to be recorded after June 2025.
The only situation when a closed account may contain information about late payments is if it has such data – and in this case, the data can be stored indefinitely from the date of the last such payment. For instance, if a loan was closed in March of 2019 and the last late payment was made in January of 2018, it should be non-existent by January of 2025.
It does not mean that an account will automatically be punished or deleted once it hits 10 or 7 years of creation. However, credit bureaus are required to have procedures through which they can remove inaccurate information, and this is not done automatically. This, therefore, means that the consumer has to make efforts to ensure that the content is removed.
If there are any inaccuracies or errors in your credit report you should dispute them with the credit bureaus. If you come across a closed account on your credit report and have met the above reasons as per the rules stated above then you should dispute the report. You also need to challenge any other credit accounts that show as closed, which you know are in fact, remain open.
To challenge such information you will make a dispute for each credit reporting agency that has the wrong information. You can dispute online, via mail, or over the phone:
Experian - www. experian. com/disputes Call 1 888 EXPERIAN (397 3742)
Equifax - www. equifax. com/personal/disputes 1 800 685 1111
TransUnion - www. transunion. com/dispute 1 855 681 3196
Provide your real name, current address, social security number, and date of birth so that the bureau can easily pull your full credit file. The account should be identified using the name and date opened or closed for each account in question. Explain specifically why you think the account is not being reported correctly, for example, it may be too old to report or it already has the wrong status of ‘Closed’. Demand that their account be deleted from your records and that you no longer transact with them.
Retain copies of any letters or faxes and documents you submitted in support of the dispute. The credit bureaus normally take between 30 to 45 days to investigate the dispute made by the consumer. They should also communicate the findings of the investigation in writing and supply you with a free updated copy of your credit report as they have made the corrections.
Go Further as Needed If a credit bureau won’t remove a closed account after your dispute, you may need to take further steps like:
- It involves filing a complaint to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- Serving a certified letter of claim informing the defendant to cease
- Sharing information with the furnisher that is delivering the account data
- However, it may be a good idea to hire a credit repair company as a mediator in negotiations.
- Seeking legal advice as to whether services have been rendered in violation of consumer credit laws
If the closed account is still legitimate the creditor or lender of the closed account is correctly reporting its closed status and you still want the account taken off because of its age, then the only way to get the account removed is to talk to the concerned creditor or lender. They do not have to erase accurate information even if it is outdated as long as the time/date stamp conforms to legal requirements. Nonetheless, there is nothing that prevents some creditors from reopening their closed accounts earlier in case the specified amount of time since their closure has been met.
The greatest success will be registered when the payment history with that creditor has been good, the account was closed for some time, and the credit holder has been responsible for managing his finances over the past few years. I have often found that delinquencies for closed accounts because of applying for a loan or a service with the same credit grantor usually help. Explain the type of an old inactive closure still negatively impacting your credit as a reason hindering your goals.
Continue to remain aggressive in the efforts to have closed accounts removed if it is possible for them not to appear on your credit reports again. Then simply keep on watching for it to reoccur on your credit report if you do not want it to appear again. It will assist in the process of enhancing the credit status gradually to increase its chances of getting approval for new credit or loans at better terms. As long as you do not continue to run arbitrary, inactive accounts in an irresponsible manner moving forward, this should not be a problem.
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