Removing collection accounts from your credit report

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Removing Collection Accounts From Your Credit Report

Unfortunately most people are unaware of the fact that removing collection accounts from your credit report is possible. Collection accounts are placed on your report for one of two main reasons. Either you fell on hard times and were not able to continue making payments on a credit account or the account is on your report without your being aware of the damaging mark.

In either case it is possible to have the account erased from your credit report.

A negative credit entry has a lifespan and should not stay on your report indefinitely, but you need to take positive actions to resolve this matter. The first step is to find out how long the collection has been reporting on your credit report and the only way to find that out is to get a hold of all three of your credit files from Equifax, Transunion and Experian.

Once you have the reports in hand you want to locate each collection account on each report and highlight them. There should be a date associated with each account when it was first reported as a collection account to that particular bureau.

If the date it was first reported is longer than seven years and six months then the account needs to be deleted from your credit file by law. Unfortunately again, if this time period has lapsed the credit bureaus do not always do what is right and drop the account, you need to send them a dispute letter with your argument being the reporting time to have such an account removed for good.

Collection entries on your credit report DO NOT have to be older than seven years to have them deleted. Disputing an entry on your credit report with the bureaus means they would need to launch an investigation into that entry.

The law requires they contact the debt collector for verification of the accuracy of that account. This process does not happen as it should which makes removing collection accounts from your credit report possible. In order to accomplish this on your own you need to be familiar with the laws governing credit bureaus, and creditors. This is known as do-it-yourself credit repair. On the other hand if don’t have the time to invest in do-it-yourself credit repair methods you can use the services of a credit repair law firm.