How Do I Remove Negative Entries From My Credit Report?
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How Do I Remove Negative Entries From My Credit Report?

The more serious the derogatory item on your credit report, the harder it will be for your credit repair company to get it completely removed. They will likely find that correctly reported collections and charge offs can only be removed by the use of tactic number three above with a Pay for Delete compromise. 

This is the only real leverage that you have with accounts that are so delinquent that they have already been charged off and/or sent out to a third party collections agency. Your credit repair service can offer to make the full original past due payment amount (trying to negotiate away some of the charges and late fees in the process) in exchange for them striking all associated negative account remarks from your credit report. 

Again, this will be much easier to negotiate for simple late payments than it will be for charge offs and especially collection accounts (which are doubly reported negatively under both charge offs and as collection accounts).

Removal of Bankruptcies

No matter how good a credit repair company may be, it is not possible for them to get a discharged bankruptcy removed from your credit files. These simply have to fall off after the stipulated from seven to 10 years time frame. They can get inaccurate information concerning the bankruptcy updated and amended however. 

You should check over this section of your credit report and consult with your credit repair company to see if any information needs to be corrected here. Bankruptcies on credit reports may seem like they are permanent fixtures, but their impact becomes less damaging with every passing year from the date of discharge.

Removal of Repossessions and Foreclosures

Repossessions pertain to loans on cars, trucks, and boats, while foreclosures relate to houses on whose mortgage you have defaulted. In both cases, the credit repair company knows that your best chances of getting these devastating derogatory remarks removed from your credit report center on challenging the original creditor to verify and validate the debt. Thanks to the Global Financial Crisis of a decade ago, many of the original lenders went bankrupt themselves. 

As a result, in the ensuing confusion, many mistakes were made and a huge number of original documents were lost forever. If your lender on your loan or mortgage is long gone, then your credit repair company has a decent chance of successfully challenging the creditor to produce the original debt documents. If they can not show original signed applications or other original proof of the debt, then they will have no choice but to contact the credit bureaus and have these accounts removed from your reports entirely. 

Removal of Judgments

Thanks to that rarest of occurrences when the three major credit bureaus agreed on providing relief to consumers (as they did back in 2017-2018), judgments and liens (including tax liens) no longer appear anywhere on your credit reports, nor do they impact your personal credit scores. There is no longer any need to have them removed. Just because they are not listed on your credit profile any longer does not mean that you do not still owe the debt. It also does not stop the creditors from trying to collect one way or another. 

Removal of Inquiries

Legitimately listed hard inquiries on your credit reports can not be removed either by you or any credit repair organization. They will drop off naturally after no more than two years from the point when the requester pulled your credit reports originally. Until then, the best thing that you can do is to avoid making requests for additional credit and loans. 

Deleting of Medical Bills

Delinquent medical bills have a lower impact on your credit score than they used to in both the FICO 9 and VantageScoring 4.0 models. For older models though, they still rank alongside delinquent credit accounts in their negative impacts on scores. Getting these removed from your credit report will require the credit repair company to use the four step process we outlined earlier in this chapter. 

As a recap, this involves the following:

  1. Submit a Dispute of Inaccurate Information to the Three Credit Bureaus
  2. Submit a Dispute of Incorrect Information to the Original Creditor
  3. Make An Offer for a Pay for Delete Compromise
  4. Request a Goodwill Deletion if You Have Already Repaid the Debt

With medical bills that are delinquent, you can also request that your credit repair company make an Offer for a Settlement for Delete. You may not have the money to pay off the entire debt, but in many cases the creditor will be willing to negotiate in exchange for a partial payment of the debt in one lump sum amount. 

It costs them nothing to delete the derogatory information from your medical account and gets them money back that they would likely never again see otherwise. 

Deleting of Charged Off Accounts

The original creditor is the party that your credit repair company will have to approach directly about getting a charged off account deleted. In many cases, if this debt was correctly reported, the only way to get it removed will be in an offer to Pay the account in full in exchange for a deletion of derogatory items. 

Many creditors will recognize that this is the only way in which they will be able to recover on an account that they have already given up on entirely. 

Credit repair companies have years of experience in handling these kinds of negotiations and know the right buttons to push to get it done. 

Deleting of Tax Liens

Fortunately for millions of consumers in the U.S. today, the credit bureaus automatically took care of the deleting of all tax liens in the years of 2017 and 2018. There are no longer any liens of any kind, nor even any public or private judgments of any kind (except bankruptcies) shown on any of your credit reports today.

How Do I Access Information from Specialized Bureaus?
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How Do I Access Information from Specialized Bureaus?

Besides the big three credit reporting bureaus of Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion, there are also some specialized consumer bureaus that contain important information which can definitely affect your finances. You can gain access to these if you need to. The most important of these for most consumers is the ChexSystems.

ChexSystems

When you go into a bank to apply for a new bank account, over 80 percent of banks will pull your report from ChexSystems to learn if you have any prior history of misusing bank accounts. Such information remains in their systems for five years after the fact. 

It will influence their approval or rejection decision for your new account. 

Chex Systems is actually a national consumer reporting agency that manages information on the use of checking and savings accounts. If you have failed to pay a fee or bounced a check, this information will be contained in your ChexSystems file. The good news is that you can obtain both your report and score from the agency at no cost. 

The report is the most useful information to have. It provides you with the back story on the reason a bank might have turned down your new account request. You are able to obtain a free copy of this report each year. You can simply request your report online by filling out this consumer disclosure form. They will send you the report which should arrive in only five business days or faster. 

CLUE Reports

CLUE is the claims information report database created and maintained by LexisNexis the international giant consumer reporting agency. They hold as much as seven years worth of your personal property and automobile claims history. 

This report will have your personal information including all of the following: your name and date of birth, policy number, type and date of loss, claim amount the firm paid out, description of the property that was covered, and your property address. The insurance companies report all claims where they pay out, deny, or establish a file on a claim. 

These CLUE reports are important where insurance is concerned. A potential insurer will likely pull your CLUE report if you ask for an insurance quote or make a full application for coverage. They are interested in your history of claims in determining what coverage they will offer you and at what cost. Their research demonstrates a consistent relationship between prior paid claims and future reported claims. 

You are able to get your free annual copy of your CLUE report courtesy of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. You can request this from LexisNexis online at: Request your personal report online (www.lexisnexis.com) or by calling their consumer center at 866-312-8076.     

Judicial Judgments

It used to be that judicial judgments showed up on your three credit reports. This practice ended in 2017/2018 when the big three bureaus eliminated all judgments from your reports and scoring algorithms.

Bankruptcy is the only public record that shows up on your credit reports anymore. In order to find out if there are any other judgments against you nowadays, you would need to order a copy of your public records from the county in which you reside. You can do this in person at the courthouse or by going to their website online. 

Utilities History 

Your utility payment history will appear on your credit report. If you are behind on payments or have charge offs with any utilities, then it will show up here. This is something that you should keep a lookout for on your credit report. Timely utility payment history will not appear on your report. It is only if you fall meaningfully behind that there will be reports made to the big three consumer credit reporting bureaus. 

Rental Background Check

Rental background checks are not simple reports compiled by a consumer reporting agency. Instead, they comprise information mostly found on your consumer credit report, such as your personal details and address, credit score, and listings of any collections, inquiries, and bankruptcies. 

They also include your employment history, public records, criminal records, and eviction records. Most of this other information the organization which is conducting the rental background check will obtain from your public records or from the application that they make you fill out for them. 

If you have been repeatedly delinquent on rent payments or not paid some final rent amount in the past, there is a good chance that it will show up as reported to the credit bureaus under derogatory information. Experian RentBureau is a separately maintained report that Experian keeps on timely and late rent payments. 

You can request a fee report from them by contacting them on their website.

Medical Insurance History

Your medical and insurance histories may not be given out without your expressed written permission. Because of this, there is no single national medical records database or report containing this information. Instead, individual doctor’s offices and hospitals each have some of your medical insurance information. 

Thanks to the Data Protection Act of 1998, no doctor will comply with a request from an insurer to reveal your medical records unless you agree in writing. The state health information exchanges are the closest things to a national database or report on your medical insurance history. You can contact the one for your state to see if they have your information available in a report to obtain a copy should you require it.

Can I Remove Foreclosure Remarks From My Credit Report?
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How Can I Remove Foreclosure Remarks From My Credit Report?

Foreclosures have a devastating impact on your credit report. The good news is that these are easier to get removed than other derogatory items. Lenders have made countless mistakes with foreclosures in the past, forcing some financial institutions to have to offer restitution to consumers when they mismanaged their foreclosures.

Among these errors were rubber stamping documents and not pursuing the proper procedure required by foreclosure law. This is why it is easier to get such records completely removed from your credit report today. 

For one thing, the lender may not even possess the necessary records. Many original lenders went bankrupt during the Global Financial Crisis and Great Recession of 2007 to 2009. Countless original documents necessary to verify the mortgage disappeared in the chaos. Many such mortgages and foreclosure rights have been sold on to new banks, creating a paperwork nightmare for the banks. 

Such sales had the unintended side effect of causing banks to fail in their task of accurate record keeping. If the bank that was listed on your credit report has gone out of business, the new bank will likely not be able to verify the foreclosure. 

All information like this in your credit file that they can not verify with the necessary documentation has to be removed by law.

Armed with this background knowledge, you should write to your foreclosing lender directly. If the credit bureaus will not remove the foreclosure, go straight to the source of the derogatory information. 

Request that they take off the entry because of mistakes. Allow them a 30 day deadline to do so before you take further action. 

In many cases, the foreclosing bank will not be able to produce the original documentation and records to verify your foreclosure. They might also decide it is not worth the time and effort to track them down. In either scenario, they will likely simply choose to remove your foreclosure remark from your credit report. 

This is worth the considerable time that it may take on your part to make the phone calls, write the letters, and follow up on, since it requires seven years for a foreclosure to drop off of your credit report otherwise. 

How Do I Handle Bankruptcy on My Credit Report?
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How Do I Handle Bankruptcy on My Credit Report?

There are two key ways that you need to handle bankruptcies on your credit report. Both of these involve tackling the bankruptcy head on instead of attempting to hide from it. One silver lining in a bankruptcy is that it erases your delinquent and outstanding account balances.

Your credit report will display $0 balances on any accounts that were successfully discharged via the bankruptcy. 

First Action – Check Your Credit Report

The first action is to ensure that your credit report correctly reflects these effects of your bankruptcy. Sometimes creditors will stubbornly keep reporting the negative account information even after your bankruptcy discharge. This is why you need to routinely check out your credit report. 

You can use a free third party credit report/score service like Credit Karma or Discover It to do this as often as you like. Checking it at least once a month in this situation is a good idea. 

It will not cause you any hard credit inquiries.

Should you find out that one or more of your creditors are showing discharged debts as active (with balances outstanding), then you need to talk with the appropriate credit reporting bureau right away. A more proactive approach is to send every agency copies of your discharge as soon as you receive it. This will alert them to the fact that they are not to report additional information on all included accounts. 

When you do come across reporting errors, you are within your rights to send out disputes to the three credit bureaus. They must address them within 30 to 45 days.

Second Action – Check Your Non-Discharged Accounts

The second action to take is to continue paying all of your non-discharged accounts on time. Not every one of your accounts will fall under the discharge order. Student loans are one prime example that can not be discharged. These active accounts will keep affecting your credit score, so be sure to pay all existing accounts and loans in a timely fashion. 

Just because an account does not yet show on your credit report is not a good reason to ignore it. Should you fall behind on payments, the accounts will be reported to the bureaus and appear tragically as if by magic. Your overarching goal is to let creditors see that your financial problems are in the past. 

How to Handle Medical Collections on Your Credit Report
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How to Handle Medical Collections on Your Credit Report

Medical collections are a pressing issue for many consumers today thanks to inadequacies in the health care system in America. Medical collections are those that specifically pertain to an unpaid medical bill.

Such an account sent to collections will probably cause a negative effect on your credit scores. There are a few ways of addressing these accounts in regards to your credit reports. This may involve working with the three major credit reporting bureaus Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax to update any information that is old or inaccurate. 

If the account in question is accurate, you should be aware that it may stay on your credit reports for seven and a half years from the point it first went delinquent. 

This negative effect will decrease with the age of the collection account. Newer credit scoring models like FICO Score 9 and Vantage Scoring 4.0 place less emphasis on unpaid medical collection accounts than they do on other ones when generating your credit scores. 

The federal law NACP makes it illegal for any medical debt to be included on your report until at least 180 days after it was first reported as delinquent to them. The law also stipulates that any bills later paid by insurance must be taken off. 

If these scenarios do not pertain to you, you should start by writing the debt collector directly. Insist on your rights to have the debt validated. According to the FDCPA, they must furnish you with proof of your medical collection account debt in order to proceed with their efforts. You must request this in writing within five days of their first effort to contact you about it. 

Demand Proof of Debt

If you do not think you owe this money, it is sensible to demand proof of the debt before you take any other steps. The collector may not be able to verify your debt, in particular if you have already paid the debt or if it mistakenly belongs to someone else. It would make things far simpler to have the collection account taken off of your credit reports if this is the case. 

After you have your proof of debt, you can still file a dispute with the individual credit reporting bureaus if you feel there is an error. Any official disputes that you file you must do one by one with every credit bureau, generally through their website is much faster in resolution. 

If you have already paid off this debt but it is still illegally contained on your personal credit reports, you should send in documentation showing the payment in full. You could have payment records from the doctor or hospital to include, or a credit card statement or bank statement for proof of form of payment. 

The credit bureaus have a month to resolve your issue and respond. 

Finally, you should be intimately acquainted with the statute of limitations regarding your medical debts in question. It may be that they will fall off of your credit reports soon enough that you do not need to worry about them. Your legal liability is also limited by the statutes of limitations. Collectors may still trouble you, but they will no longer have the ability to sue you or file judgments past that point. 

Be careful about making even small payments on a time limited debt. This can cause it to be revived in some states, which resets the appropriate statute of limitations. 

It may be that you actually do not have the money to pay the medical bills. In this case, it is always possible to arrange for a settlement with the debt collector. You would consent to paying a more reasonable amount that you can afford in exchange for them marking the account as settled and ceasing future collection efforts to recover the debt.