Equifax Dispute

By Justin Hutto

A dispute can be filed with Equifax by creating a dispute letter and mailing it to them. In your letter you will need to include a reason as to why the listing is inaccurate.

You can write a dispute letter yourself or you can hire a service to write it on your behalf. You should be aware that a dispute letter must be sent to each credit bureau.

This means that simply disputing an item with Equifax will not remove the item from your Transunion or Experian credit report. Instead you will have to send each of the bureaus a dispute letter.

Reasons for a dispute include; information is wrong, item out of date, account paid in full, not my account and others. The Fair Credit Reporting Act that was passed by congress gives you the right to dispute any listing on your credit that you feel is inaccurate.

In addition this act says the bureaus must remove a listing from your report if it can not be verified. This act is what the dispute process is based upon.

When the bureaus receive your dispute they will investigate. During this investigation they will contact the creator of the item and request verification of the account, the dates, and the balance.

If this item is not verified by the creator then the bureaus must remove it from your credit report. Often investigations will result in the removal of an item from your report. This is because many businesses are not willing to spend the resources to verify disputed debts.

Before the bureaus will investigate your dispute they must deem it valid. There is no clear definition of what a valid dispute is.

It is common for bureaus to respond to a dispute letter with another letter that requests more information about the dispute. This is said to be a stall tactic the bureaus use to avoid conducing and investigation.

This is because it will only cost the bureaus money to investigate disputes. The bureaus customers are businesses and only because of government law is there a dispute process.

I suggest a credit repair service if you have multiple listings you wish to dispute. However you can repair your credit yourself if you have minor damage, be patient and persistent.

In sum you can remove bad credit items before seven years. You can dispute the bureaus and have the negative item removed.

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You can also learn how to remove palisades collection or midland credit management both of these are common collection agencies.