Online Credit Disputes – Top reasons to stay away.

Top Reasons To Write Your Disputes

Reason #1:- As most of you know, one factor you have on your side when disputing credit is time. The legal thirty-day limit is not a lot of time for a credit bureau, creditor, or collection agency to properly investigate a dispute. The Credit Bureaus online dispute system is set up in such a way that when you use it, it makes their job not only that much easier but cost efficient. The information you put into their limited dispute fields falls right into their electronic verification system. The online dispute system is making the process easier for the credit agencies therefore cutting down your chances of deleting the record drastically.

Reason #2: Zero Paper Trail: Any good attorney will tell you that “documentation beats confrontation”. By challenging something online you do not have a paper trail of the correspondence. This does not help you when the response you receive is not favorable and you need to challenge it again.

Reason #3: When the FCRA was amended a few years ago a few provisions were added in for our friends (me being ironic) at the credit agencies called “Expedited Dispute Resolution” Section 611a(8) the on-line dispute system. See below….

“…the agency shall not be required to comply with paragraphs 2, 6 and 7 with respect to that dispute if they delete the tradeline within 3 days.” You are probably wondering what this means so let me explain….

Paragraph 2 requires the CRA to forward your dispute and all related documentation you provide to the furnisher. This rarely happens and is a violation of the FCRA. This is additional ammunition that we can use to challenge something.

Paragraph 6 requires the CRA to provide you with written results of the investigation.

Paragraph 7 requires the CRA to provide you with the method of verification on request from the consumer.

Have you heard of something called a “Soft Delete”???

The Credit Reporting Agency (CRA) can delete a disputed trade line for 30 days, then, the trade line can reappear when the furnisher (creditor or collector) reports it again in the next cycle. That is because the CRA is not required to tell the furnisher you disputed it thanks to section 2 being omitted. This is sometimes called a “soft delete” and it is not permanent. This can be a major shock right before a mortgage refinance or purchase closing for many consumers when their credit is pulled right before a closing.

In addition, the consumer loses their right to request a “Method of Verification” (MOV) so you lose this powerful tool in the dispute process thanks to Paragraph 7 being omitted.

As always feel free to contact our office with any questions regarding the prospect of repairing your credit.

Nikitas Tsoukalis, President

Key Credit Repair