I'm $36K in debt per my tri-agency credit report because of same items listed repeatedly. How to fix?

Question

Any advice on how to repair extremely bad credit myself would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

What you need to do is dispute these reports with the credit bureau. What they are doing is illegal and if these reports are not removed, you can sue them in small claims court for $1000 for each entry!

But you need to do it right! So follow these instructions.

Send a dispute letter to the credit bureau listing these entries and point out these are duplicate entries.

The Bureau will then contact each of the creditors and "verify" that the debts are valid. If they get no response the report is deleted. If they respond back and verify the debt, the report stays on your history.

At the same time, send a "demand to validate" letter to the creditors who are listing these entries. Demand that they send you copies of contracts, bills, receipts, and anything that was used to calculate what they claim you owe them. They have 30 days to respond.

If they do not send this, send another letter to the credit bureau and demand the listing be removed due to "lack of validation".

Make sure you send all of these letter by certified mail to prove you contacted them.

If the listings are still there, file a lawsuit in small claims court. It's easy and doesn't cost that much.

I had to do the same thing to get an inaccurate listing removed from my record, and won $1200 for my troubles. Don't let them push you around!

Answer 2

Many times tri-merge credit reports are inaccurate, you would be better off ordering your report from each credit bureau.

If you find duplicate accounts on your reports (reported by the same company), you should dispute all of the dupe's to the credit bureaus as duplicate accounts and request deletion.

If they are the same account but reported by different company's, then they have probably been sold and the seller of the account has not removed the tradeline.

If the original creditor and a collection agency is reporting, that's the way it is - as long as they are reporting accurately !! (bet they aren't though)

If you have the original creditor and two or three collection agency's, then the only collection agency that can legally report is the one who currently owns the account now.

If you are out of the statute of limitations (SOL) for your state, or close to it, I would suggest sending the collection agency a debt validation letter (certified mail return receipt) After receiving the green card back, then send the credit bureau a dispute.

I have been to "many" free clean up your credit yourself sites. I'm listing the best one I have been to.

The information on that site is amazing. And plenty of people willing to answer questions that you may have.

Answer 3

Challange some of or all of the items in your credit report. Especially the ones you think are of a lower amount, listed twice in different amounts or the same amounts, or ones you dont recall. Some times it can be credit fraud, but alot of times companies dont always update their record either, after 7 years the older bills should be off your credit, bankruptcy in 10 and judgements about 10 years. Those affect your credit the worst, after you challange some if they remove any dont worry about those, then start paying off the smaller items, atleast those will show pd in full, just late, then make some kind of monthly payments as you can on the bigger bills but steadily, to get those balances lower. Then apply for a bad credit credit card,like orchard bank and dont use a whole lot its a limit of like 300 dollars and make the monthly payments on time and in good standing these few thing will help get your score up a while, while you work on paying other stuff, then gradually go after a little more credit, but make sure to keep the payments low to keep up with it to help increase your credit rating....it may be higher intrest at first but youll adventually see a decrease along the way,,,its working so far for me after my divorce.

Answer 4

There should be instructions on the form as to how to contact the agency(ies) and request a review/correction. This is a coimmon issue that is usually fixed fairly quickly. My guess is that you had a loan or two sold from bank to bank. This will give the appearance of multiple accounts.

Answer 5

There is a lot of good info on this subject right here.