Credit Report

Accurate Items are Deleted from Credit Reports Everyday

The FTC tells us that "No one can legally remove accurate and timely negative information from a credit report", credit repair companies are required by law to say the same thing, and just about every other credit repair resource you can find agrees. This statement is not only deceptive, but it is dead wrong.

The truth is that accurate items are legally removed from credit reports everyday. In an ideal world, there would be no way to remove accurate items from your credit reports but in practice this is not the case. The Fair Credit Reporting Act says the credit bureaus must remove any item on your credit reports you dispute if after performing an investigation, they are unable to prove the item should be there. A more accurate version of the statement made by the FTC is that "no one can legally remove accurate, timely, and verified negative information from a credit report".

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The One Hundred Word Credit Statement

If you dispute an item on your credit reports and after conducting an investigation the credit bureau you are disputing with does not delete the item, you have the right to submit a one hundred word statement to be added to their credit reports. This statement is supposed to be a way for you to plead your case to creditors looking at your credit reports.

According to the Fair Credit Reporting Act:

"If the reinvestigation does not resolve the dispute, the consumer may file a brief statement setting forth the nature of the dispute. The consumer reporting agency may limit such statements to not more than one hundred words if it provides the consumer with assistance in writing a clear summary of the dispute."

Many consumer advocates claim that this one hundred word credit statement can make a difference between being denied credit and getting a loan. While this may have been the case 30 years ago, it certainly is not the case today. Personal statements such as these are almost never read by creditors. Creditors have better things to do with their time than pore through your entire credit report in order to determine what sort of a credit risk you are. Instead, they simply look at your credit score and assume the Fair Isaac folks have accurately converted your credit risk into a single numerical value.

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Removing a Bankruptcy from Your Credit Reports

Yes, it can be done.

People will say there is no way you can remove a bankruptcy from your credit reports but there is nowhere in the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) that says certain items on credit reports cannot be removed. All it says is any information on your credit reports that cannot be verified as accurate must be removed.

If you think about it, this makes sense. Creditors and the credit bureaus make mistakes all the time. For example, a former employer of mine who was also the CEO, President and co-founder of a multi-million dollar company was denied a mortgage loan because his credit reports showed he had filed for bankruptcy. He definitely had not filed for bankruptcy but he did have a very common first and last name (5,537 people in the U.S. share his first and last name according to ww2.howmanyofme.com). In all likelihood, someone had mistakenly added someone else's bankruptcy information to his credit reports.

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