How To Write Bureau Dispute Letters - Part 1

You can have success with your credit repair by just disputing items with the credit bureaus.  Though that is what many credit repair companies use for their services, I personally believe to eliminate the alleged debts, you need to demand validation from both creditors and collectors in addition to disputing with credit bureaus.  When you are repairing your credit, even if you don't want to do validation letters, you absolutely must dispute with the credit bureaus.

I get quite a bit of emails from people who are not sure how to dispute with bureaus and need help with what to say, how many items can you dispute at a time, whether or not you should dispute each item individually, and a number of other questions relating to bureau disputes.  I'm going to try to answer most of them here and give you examples of how to dispute the different types of items. I'm breaking this up into 2 posts because it will be quite lengthy if I do it in just 1.

Let's start with the first part of disputing with credit bureaus.

I want to suggest to you when you start working on your credit, that you do a couple things prior to the actual account disputing. First, Opt Out from all 3 bureaus. What this means is that you do not want them selling your information for marketing purposes.  You can do it by phone or in writing or online.  

By Phone:

(888) 567-8688 - This will opt you out for 5 years.

Online:

http://www.optoutprescreen.com – you can opt out for 5 years or permanently. If you want to permanently opt out, you will need to mail in a form they provide on the site.

By mail:

You must contact each of the bureaus separately to opt out by mail.

Experian

Opt Out

PO Box 919

Allen, TX 75013

TransUnion

Name Removal Option

PO Box 505

Woodlyn, PA 19094

Equifax

Options

PO Box 740213

Atlanta, GA 30374

The next thing you should do is to look through each of your credit reports and note every name variation that is not correct, any addresses that are old and tied to something negative, and any phone numbers, employment or other personal information that is old, not correct or that you just don't need any collectors getting hold of.  Dispute each of these things with the credit bureaus.

A typical dispute for personal information is as follows:

"You are reporting names that are not me.  I have never used them, they are not aliases, they are flat out not me and don't belong on my credit report.  Remove these names please."  Then list the names that don't belong to you.

"You are reporting addresses on my credit report that I don't live at, don't belong to me, and I don't recognize. You obviously have someone else's address information on my credit report and because it's inaccurate you must remove them immediately."

Keep doing this with each personal information item that you want removed. Usually they remove them pretty quickly.  They might fight back on the addresses if they are tied to public record information, so you might need to go after them several times.  Experian is the worst for removing addresses, so just be aware of that.

At the same time you are disputing your personal information, if you have any public record information, you need to write to the court and/or county recorder and ask them if they furnish information to the credit bureaus or if they verify with them either.  You will want to tell them that you are only inquiring about what they do, and that you are not interested in the dispute process or being given some information from some court website about how long public records stay on your credit.  Just tell me does your court actually furnish or verify any information with credit reporting agencies,  You will need to include a self addressed stamped envelope with your inquiry so that they will send you the response as quickly as possible.  I actually have a letter and form that I am willing to share that is sent to the court clerk and county clerk that says what I just wrote above.  You'll need to email me for that.

So, we will get to the actual account disputing with credit bureaus on the next post,  If you have any public records that you will be attempting to remove, please email me for the court clerk and county recorder letters.  Also mention the FTC Staff Opinion Letter as that will be instrumental in removing public records as well and you'll need it when you start your disputing of those items.

My email address is up above on the right hand side, but here it is for those who can't see it on their phones.  futurefico@gmail.com

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