the credit bureaus are not government run agencies, but are for profit, multi billion dollar industries that make money off of selling your personal information. It is proven that they make more money off of you with bad credit, rather than good credit, so don’t believe everything that they tell you in results you receive back. Make sure to spend time, in detail, looking at your results and ensuring things like the date of verification have the current date. 50% Of transunion verified accounts have old verification dates, which means they never investigated that account, yet put verified as a result anyway.

Your credit picture is very important and should be kept up the entire time. Do not wait until the last minute (I.e. You want to apply for a mortgage next month). Credit repair is a process and you should allow appropriate time to remove items from the bureaus

If a creditor verifies a previously deleted item after the 30 day window, they can add it back on. A notice of this reinsertion must be sent the consumer within 5 days.

When disputing questionable items in a credit report, always remember to dispute with all three major credit bureau agencies. When applying for a mortgage, all lenders look at items reported by all three credit bureaus.

Prior to applying for a mortgage fixing all credit report errors will optimize your chances of obtain the best financing terms available.

You can allowed a copy of your credit once a year from each credit bureau. Along with your credit report will be a dispute form.

If you are unable to spend the time to write the letters yourself then you might want to hire a credit repair company to do this for you. They will act on your behalf to write the necessary letters to the three credit bureaus. There are many companies to choose from these days and it might be in your best interest to consult with your mortgage broker as to which company will give you the best service.

If a credit bureau can not verify that a disputed item is correct as reported, it must modify or remove it from the consumers’ file. If the trade line confirms at a later date that the information was indeed correct, the credit bureau will add the information back into the consumers’ file. It will notify the consumer in writing as to the changes, within 5 days of the change.

Do not expect information to be deleted just because a collection account or debt has been paid. Derogatory items will remain on your report for 7 years. The 7 year clock on a derogatory item falling off your report does not start until the item has been satisfied.

Under the fair credit reporting act effective october 1, 1997, a credit reporting agency has 5 days from the date of receipt of a written investigation request to contact the appropriate credit grantor about investigation the complaint’s) and receive a reply back within 30 days of the original notification date. Within 5 business days after the completion of the investigation, the credit bureau (I.e.: Equifax, transunion, Experian) must send a written report to the consumer with it’s findings with a copy of the revised report if there were any changes made.