How To Get Rid Of Negative Credit Report Items?
Negative items on a credit report include late payments, Charge-Offs, collections, Tax Liens, lawsuits, judgments, and more.
It is crucial because credit reports are essential in your financial life. Bureaus’ credit reports are used in evaluating whether to grant credit, or not, and at what interest rates to the lenders. If there is negative information on your credit report, it will affect your credit score, making it difficult for you to access credit at higher interest rates.
The good news is that you do not have to sit back and do nothing as there are ways to have the negative items deleted or erasedrom the credit report. In some cases, you can request the complete removal of the item while in other cases, you can provide extra information that supports the fact that the item is paid, settled, out of date, or simply not accurate.
Review Your Credit Reports
The first thing that one should do is review the credit reports generated by the three major credit reporting agencies; these are Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. This will enable you to review your periodic and year-end negative items and determine if they are being reported accurately. AnnualCreditReportcom provides a free copy of your reports that you should review at least once per year.
Common negative items that might appear include:
- Late Payments
- Collection accounts (it will show those debts that are in the collection)
- Judgments
- Bankruptcies
- Repossessions
- Foreclosures
- Charge-offs (demonstrate a high level of delinquency and illustrate that the lender took a loss on the debt).
When reviewing the data, read the details such as dates, account numbers, creditor names, and status indicators such as ‘Due to be deleted’ for the amount that is due in arrears. If you find such issues or things that you know are false, then, dispute those right away.
Challenge misinformation or outdated information
If there is any information in your credit reports is incomplete, misleading, outdated, or incorrect, then you should begin a dispute with the credit bureau(s) that reported the information. This is one of the most effective ways of beginning to discharge the adverse items in the reports.
There are three ways to do it, which are by contacting the credit bureau through the internet, through the post, and through a phone call where you have the option of filling out a dispute form through the bureau’s website. Af furnishes, any records or information that you have that portray a different situation from what is being described.
In as much as the credit bureau is entitled to remove the negative information in your credit report, by law it is supposed to investigate within one month. Many of them will revert with the results in 10-14 days. Each credit bureau has to remove or alter the given item if it cannot be confirmed or the dispute is proven to be legitimate.
Negotiate Directly With Creditors
Reducing or deleting negative items in your credit reports is one of the easiest ways in case you deal with your creditors directly. This proves useful if you have past due payments, accounts in collection, outstanding judgments, or any other negative references listed.
Make a civil call to the creditor or collection agency that reported the debt and ask if they would consider making any goodwill changes to the reporting. Detail how the negative item is hindering your credit improvement, or a statement like ‘I intend to pay off my debts and rebuild my credit,’ followed by a question about the possibility of the client removing the item from the credit reports.
Most of the creditors will not mind working with you, in most cases, they will wait for you to bring some form of commitment to clear the balance or pay some of the amount in question. There are ways of dealing with it, for instance, having records to show that you have been making payments towards debts can be of help. These negotiations should be done with a lot of push but heed to the fact that one is dealing with other people.
Just for my records, I might as well add that getting negative items removed is beneficial for you as well as the creditor. The reason for this is that if you get a raw deal in the credit market, and can access cheaper credit, then you can meet the repayment obligations that are owed.
Await the Hopes of Late Payments to Disappear
Fortunately, one piece of beneficial information is that negative information on credit reports is time-sensitive. Finally, the majority of late payments normally fall off your credit reports after seven years. Insolvency remains in the books for ten years.
Thus, although seven years seems like a long time to have bad credit, if you have been able to segregate the late payments for more than two or three years, those should drop off your credit report soon. Do not add any further late payments or other unfavorable entries to the credit report, and as long as old negative remarks remain, credit is reconstructed instantly.
Thus, you can only request your late payments to be removed as long as the reporting time limits have not elapsed, and you cannot argue that you deserve an accurate late payment to be taken out before the specified reporting period. But their destructiveness decreases over time, and they must vanish at the seven-year interval.
Re-aging creditors with the intent of the debtor to continue the business.
If your credit report includes an account that appears to be recently late or delinquent and you are sure you made the payment, requesting the creditor to “re-age” the account report is alright. This is a process of altering the status, and dates to depict the account is current based on the payments made.
Overall, re-aging can be useful but it should be done prudently as creditors are only allowed to re-age an account once or twice. Contact the creditors of the accounts you plan to re-age, to explain that you might not have properly understood certain rules, you have made payments, or some records show you were current on the account.
Legal proceedings are recommended for false reporting and have been included in the following ways:
In some cases where you find unscrupulous reporters who are just out to taint your credit report with negative information that is not verified you will require the services of an attorney to force credit bureaus and creditors to act in the correct way to investigate the faulty information that is on your credit reports. If you have been unable to dispute or negotiate and there are still issues with an account, seek legal help from a credit repair attorney or sue under consumer protection laws.
In severe cases, you may be able to sue creditors with false reporting and or take civil action against them. You can also submit reports to the relevant government authorities, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or the Federal Trade Commission on perceived violations of the law such as the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Legal actions should still be undertaken with due regard to the type of errors that have been committed and the probability of getting rid of negative items permanently. Still, for some credit report nightmares, they offer extra features.
Bonus Tip: Do Not Go for Instant Credit “Rejuvenation”
Lastly, some schemes offer to fix your credit score immediately for a fee, thus, avoid any services or companies that offer to do so with fraudulent practices or promises. If you need further advice on how to remove certain items on your credit reports or how to build credit in the longer term, legitimate credit counseling services or other financial professionals may assist. However, claims of quick solutions or simple ways of eradicating truthful negativity are sure to be cons.
Keep to tested approaches towards challenging inaccuracies, asking for repayment, and waiting for negative entries to drop out per regulatory reporting periods. If one is to pay bills regularly moving forward to avoid having numerous credit applications would be the most effective way to rebuild your credit score in the long run. However, use deletion facilities for the information that is wrong, invalid, or can be removed to enhance the credit files.
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