*Note: This was written by a Yahoo! contributor. Do you have a personal finance story that you'd like to share? Sign up with the Yahoo! Contributor Network to start publishing your own finance articles.
I remember the feeling of horror I had when I ran my credit report and found several accounts on my credit that were inaccurate. After the initial panic subsided, I began looking for options to have these negative and inaccurate items removed from my credit report.
Filing a Dispute With the Credit Reporting Agency
The first thing I did was follow the instructions for filing a dispute with the credit reporting agency. Because I ran my report online, that process was fairly easy. I simply went to the dispute website provided by the credit reporting agency, filled in my information, and gave my reason for the dispute on each of the accounts. The credit reporting agency has 30 days to investigate the dispute and report the results back to you. They contact the companies directly to have them verify the account information. I tracked the status of my dispute to make sure it was being handled. I was able to get most of the inaccurate accounts removed from my credit. I checked with the other two credit reporting agencies after this to make sure that the accounts had been removed from their files as well.
Calling the Company
Unfortunately one account was not removed from my credit through this process. The company indicated to the credit reporting agency that the account was a valid account and that according to their records my name was associated with the account. The account in question had been opened without my knowledge or consent. I contacted the company directly to see what I could do about it. I looked up their information online and after being transferred a few times, I found the department that I needed to contact to dispute the account. Because the credit report does not have the final four numbers of the account and that is the only information I had, they had a little trouble locating the correct account. When I explained the situation to them, they asked me to send a letter to them with the information I had given them over the phone. After they received this letter they removed the account from my credit report.
The entire process from filing the dispute with the credit reporting agency to having that last account removed from my credit took about 60 days. Because of this experience, I am now always diligent about checking my credit report at least every 6 months to make sure the information is accurate so that I can file a dispute in a timely manner if I find anything that should not be there.
There are no comments yet