There are many things you can do to clean up your credit report. Check your credit report often and you may find that it is not as clean as you expect it to be.
Clean up credit report - who would need this?
Unfortunately, almost everyone ... because the credit agency entries are done by humans, and human errors are common. Besides there could be an identity theft causing your credit report to look bad and your score to go down, or some old records that relate to long time closed accounts.
Here are just a few items that you may find on your reports that can make your credit rating go down:
- duplicate records that duplicate your unpaid balances
- someone else's accounts attached to your name in error
- paid and closed accounts that have never been removed
- accounts disputed with collectors long time ago and never removed
- accounts or charges caused by identity theft
- balances posted to your accounts in error
- records of credit inquires taken without your permission and knowledge
All those things can be disputed and removed from your report - see how you can really clean it up.
Clean up credit report - with dispute letters
How do you clean these items out of your credit? You dispute them with the Credit Agencies, with all three of them - TransUnion, Equifax and Experian. You would have to order all three reports and work through them one by one - some items will be found in all three reports, some only in one. If you want clean credit you got to do some work - no one else will do it for you. A few bad items removed from your credit report may save you thousands of dollars on the long run.
You can only dispute bad records on your credit reports by mail, by fax or by internet - credit agencies don't dispute items on the phone. So if you're going to write and fax, see credit report dispute letters page to find many examples.
But if I were to clean up my credit report, I would do it online. Follow the links on the bottom or on the top right to start disputes online.
Clean up credit report - credit agencies specifics
Also, you will need to know exactly which credit agency you can fax to and which mail to only. The agencies will only consider your requests if you approach them in the appropriate manner that is unique to each agency. To properly clean up your credit report learn about each out of three:
Dispute Experian
Dispute TransUnion
Dispute Equifax
