Originally posted by No Name:
Of course no one asked you the most important question in my opinion...
Are these negative items legitimate? I am not being a jerk, I know there are legitimate reasons many people get themselves into trouble with credit. But, if these items are legitimate they are going to be much harder to remove.
One thing these credit repair companies don't share is they can often get a legitimate item removed because the creditor does not respond with proof within the allowed time. However, there is absolutely nothing preventing that legitimate item from returning at some point in the future if the creditor does decide to get off their butt and resubmit with proof. Historically, most who fail to respond in the allowed time never go through the steps to get them resubmitted.
But, times they are a changin' and that practice may go the way of the dinosaur.
You got some really good advice here and there is absolutely NOTHING a credit repair company can do that you can't. Submit the disputes, do it in writing and HAND WRITE the letters. Dispute one item per letter and DO NOT mail all of them all at once. If you spread them out they are more likely to assume you have actually researched each of these on your own.
There is a good chance if you are persistent you can get most if not all negatives removed.
However, the bureaus are offering a fairly new product allowing creditors to see what your FICO "was" at intervals depending on what level of service they buy from the bureau. Responsible borrowers don't have large or cyclical swings in their scores. More and more creditors are starting to look back to see if there has been a large upward movement in the FICO and asking the buyer to explain why it happened.
The credit bureaus could care less if you have researched anything, follow the money trail. There is no money in verifying disputes , they make their money selling your"s and my information and we don"t profit from it.
You can dispute as many line items as you want and you don"t need to handwrite anything. Persistence is the key.
This is not my opinion but fact, as I used to do this for a living and have proof of multiple line items being deleted at one time.
Good positive marks can out shine negative marks though,
and there are strategies to do this, here is one.
Open a savings account for x amount of dollars ( let"s say $1000 as an example ) , go back to the bank the next day
and get a loan from them using your savings account as collateral, they will loan you about 85% of that, take the money that they loan you and repeat the process at 2 other banks. You will then have 3 different banks reporting on your credit report that you have a loan with them.
It will cost some in interest over 6 month period or so,
but could be well worth it. But remember that you have to leave the money in the savings account while you do this. :D
