By Justin Hutto

A dispute letter is an individuals' method of challenging a negative mark on their credit report. In this letter a reason for the dispute and what item you are disputing is required.

Common reasons for a dispute are; account is not mine, account paid in full, item is out of date and more. When the credit bureaus receive your dispute and deem it valid they will investigate the dispute.

During and investigation the credit bureau will contact the lender or collection agency that made the negative mark and verify the debt and its dates and amounts. If the account can not be verified then it must be removed from your report.

An investigation often results in a negative mark being removed. This is because many businesses will not spend the time and money to verify a disputed item.

It is rumored that during an investigation public records are not checked. This means that there is a high rate of success in disputing judgments and foreclosures.

Another option is to hire a service to perform your disputes for you. This can help tremendously especially if you are disputing multiple items.

Frequently dispute letters will result in the credit bureaus requesting more information from you. In addition you must dispute a bad credit item with each credit bureau separately.

Thus the organization during your credit repair can become a challenge on its own. Also credit services can use advanced dispute techniques such as; creditor direct intervention, debt validation and escalated dispute information requests to remove a bad credit item.

Frequently these services will have lawyers on their staff which will enable you to go to court if it is required. Also with a service you may be eligible to file a lawsuit against a collection agency for illegal debt collection practices.

It is your responsibility to remove inaccurate or unverifiable bad credit marks from your report. There are estimates that 1 in every 4 Americans has a bad credit mark that is inaccurate or unverifiable on the credit report.

In sum, you should dispute any inaccurate or unverifiable bad credit item on your credit. Use a dispute letter to challenge this item and do not just wait 7 years for the item to be removed.

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