How to Dispute Outdated Credit Information
Late payments, charged-off debts, automobile repossessions, court judgments for unpaid bills and other negative information cannot hurt your credit rating forever because the law requires its removal from your credit reports after a certain time. Most bad items get removed after seven years, but bankruptcies get reported by Equifax, Experian and TransUnion for 10 years, according to the Federal Trade Commission. You have a legal right to dispute any outdated information that is not removed on schedule.
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Instructions
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Review all three of your credit reports to see which ones contain outdated information. Equifax, Experian and TransUnion work independently, so their data sometimes differs. All three bureaus cooperatively run AnnualCreditReport.com to distribute free annual reports to consumers as mandated by the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act. You pay nothing to obtain your credit reports through that website.
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Read through your records to confirm that questionable information on your credit reports is, in fact, outdated. The 7-year reporting period begins on the date of the last account activity, according to Equifax. This usually means that the clock starts on the day you stopped paying the bill, although making another payment at some point restarts it, even if you just send a small amount. The 10 years for bankruptcy reporting begins when you file your case, the Moran Law Group advises.
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Alert the three credit bureaus to any problems with outdated information by completing the dispute forms on their individual websites. Federal law allows them 30 days to process your complaints, according to the FTC, after which they are required to remove the old data if your disputes were legitimate. The bureaus can leave the entries on your credit reports if you were wrong about the last activity dates and the creditors provide proof that refutes your mistaken claims.
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Write a personal statement of no more than 100 words if you do not agree with the credit bureaus' final decisions on your disputes of outdated information and tell them to attach it to your credit reports. All consumers can legally add such statements when they do not agree with something and the bureaus will not change it, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Use your statement to specify the data you believe is outdated and to explain your reasons. Every company that checks your credit reports gets to see this information.
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Tips & Warnings
Use the credit report copies that you get to check for outdated information to look for other kinds of errors, too. The Fair Credit Reporting Act puts no limit on the mistakes you can challenge in a single dispute, as long as you have factual grounds for your complaints.
References
- Privacy Rights Clearinghouse; Facts on FACTA, the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act ; February 2011
- Moran Law Group: Bankruptcy in Brief
- Equifax: Credit Report FAQs
- Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco: Your Credit Report, What it Says About You
- Federal Trade Commission; How to Dispute Credit Report Errors; September 2008
- Federal Trade Commission; Knee Deep in Debt; February 2011
