Credit Repair Basics

Where the Heck do I Start?

Diving into the world of credit repair can be overwhelming to say the least.

In the beginning it's almost like learning a foreign language.

There is a wealth of information out there and at first its going to be hard to decipher much of anything.

Disputing 

Disputing is your main tool for credit repair.

Disputes are basically going to fall into two categories:

1.) Disputing through the CRAs (Credit Reporting Agencies)


2.) Disputing with the CAs (Collection Agencies)

Two common forms of disputes are requesting verification and requesting validation

1.) Verification: Consumers have the right to challenge any of the information on their credit report.

2.) Validation: Consumers also have the right to ask the collection agency to provide some form of documentation that said debt is truely yours.

CA's validate, they don't verify. CRA's verify, they don't validate.

Removing Old Addresses

Before you ever start firing off disputes one of the first steps to undergo is removing any and all previous addresses from your credit report. This will help your credit repair efforts immensely, particularly if your negative reporting is associated with these old addresses.

Basically, here's why: Anything negative on your credit report is going to have some basic information associated with it such as your name, your social security number, your account number and your address.

If you were to dispute a negative report and all of the information matches exactly, then it is obviously pretty simple for the CRA or the CA to verify.

When some of this information does not match (like your address) then the software is going to recognize this discrepancy, and attempt to go to the original source of information to verify.

Basically what this does is make it harder on the CRA or CA to verify, and that's kind of what the game is all about. If the CRA or CA has to spend extra time or money to verify a negative report they are more likely to drop the ball.

Your negative report must be deleted if any of the following occur:
1.) There is no response to your request
2.) Your request is not responded to within 30 days

So if you can make it more difficult to verify your dispute, and the CRA or CA does not wish to expend the extra time or money verifying your dispute, then you are in the clear!

Often all it takes is a simple phone call to each of the CRA's to have an old invalid address removed.