Monday, December 8, 2008

TransUnion Dispute

By John Cooper

To dispute a bad credit item on your TransUnion credit report you must use the dispute process. This is done by hiring a service or creating a dispute letter.

You need to know that you must dispute an item with each credit bureau. If you fail to do this and only dispute TransUnion then your Experian and Equifax credit report will still show the item.

In your letter you need to include what item you are disputing and the reason for the dispute. Reasons include; item out of date, information is wrong, account paid, and more.

Once TransUnion receives your dispute they will investigate the item. They will contact the collection agency or lender and verify the account, the dates on the account, and the account balance.

If the lender is unable to verify the account then the item must be erased from your credit report. Often an investigation will result in the removal of a bad credit item.

If your account is verified by the lender then if you have a service this can be very beneficial. A service is able to use advanced dispute techniques to remove items. These techniques are; escalated dispute information requests, creditor direct intervention, and debt validation.

A common concern for people is "Is it legal to dispute my credit?" Yes, the Fair Credit Reporting Act passed by Congress gives you the right to dispute any item on your report that you believe to be inaccurate.

We suggest you save all copies of your communication with TransUnion. In addition we discourage you from disputing items online or over the phone. We have found this to be an ineffective method of disputing bad credit items.

Also there is a 100 word statement that you can put on your credit report next to a derogatory item. In the past this was a place where you could provide an explanation as to why the account became delinquent.

Today if you fill out this statement it will more likely be used by the bureaus. The bureaus use this as verification that the item is accurate and they will deem any dispute letter you send as frivolous and ignore it.

In sum you can remove bad credit items from TransUnion. This is done by disputing the item. - 16928

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