]Are You In Control Of Your Credit Score
There are some aspects of your credit score that you can control—like the debts you currently owe, the number and types of accounts you hold and your payment history on those accounts. But, sometimes, all these factors slip beyond your control.
Here are some instances when having a poor credit score is not entirely your fault.
- In case of identity theft, someone may have applied for credit under your name.
- Your account has a wrong name and address because of some clerical errors.
- Your loan or credit card payments were applied to another person’s account
Solution:
Request a Copy of your Free Credit Report
If ever you find “potentially negative” information in your personal credit report, study them. Perhaps you have missed payments in the past months and it resulted to a lower score. But, the late payment information is not yet deleted. You need to write a letter to the credit bureau so that the account will no longer appear in your listing.
Dispute Negative Listings
Remember that it is your right to receive an accurate credit report. So, dispute errors online or via mail, attaching a copy of your credit file and a letter describing the inaccurate or wrong entries in it, with copies of your receipts or any proof of payment and other supporting documents. The credit bureau will remove the entry upon proper investigation, should they find your claim valid.
If you don’t want to contact the credit bureau you can file the dispute directly with the information provider. It can be a bank, credit card provider or debt collecting agency that reported the erroneous information to the credit bureau. Make a written dispute and file it with the business. They will conduct an investigation and if there was indeed an error, they will notify all the credit bureaus about it so that your report will be updated.
Update your Payments
It is also important to pay off your debts before the next billing cycle. You will see an improvement in your credit rating the moment you re-establish a current history of on-time payments on your recurring accounts like a line of credit and credit card. These re-occurring repayments can help boost your credit score.
Then, there are factors that are beyond your control. These include accurate information that lowers your credit rating.
If after the investigation, the credit bureau was able to verify rather accuracy of the information, they will not delete those disputed items, simply because they are accurate and verifiable.
Here‘s what you can do instead:
- Request your creditor to delete the information in exchange of prompt payment for your past due or delinquent debts. You can also explain the reasons for your late payments, including your financial situation that probably affected your capacity to pay on time.
- Wait for the negative information to be deleted from the report—that could take seven years, and in case of bankruptcy—10 years.
- Replace the negative information with positive information. Start building good payment history, avoid opening new credit accounts and always check your credit for updated information.
- Clean your credit. There are things like, payment history, credit mix, total debts and new accounts, as well as other factors that you need to consider before taking actions. Know what to look for, and their implications not only on your credit rating but on how your lenders will measure it up against their standards.
If you want to increase your score, there is one effective strategy you should never ignore: remove the negative information on your credit file.
Clean Credit takes you through the step-by-step process on how you can repair your credit using effective strategies to permanently remove your defaults. We understand that it is not easy to write dispute letters, that’s why we provided templates and sample letters to make the credit repair process easy for you.
You will also learn the different strategies in negotiating with your creditors to get them to agree with you. We also provided the right contacts and links so that you will only deal with the right people all throughout the credit repair process.
Remember that a good credit score is key to getting approved for low-interest credit cards and Home Loans. Make an enquiry today on how to get negative credit report information removed permanently from your credit report.
