What's wrong with submitting disputes online?

There are two major reasons why you should do everything the hard way.

First, when you submit disputes online, there is no paper trail. If things get nasty and you need to escalate things to the court system, unless you are able to subpeona the records (fat chance), you won't have any evidence of your disputes.

The second reason, and the one that affects more people, is that by disputing negative information online, you are basically giving up some of your rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. When you submit a dispute by mail, the credit bureaus are required to forward your dispute and all related documentation to the credit furnisher, to provide you with written results of the investigation, and provide you with the method of verification if you request it. If you dispute online, however, the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act states that the credit bureau doesn't have to do any of these things if they delete the tradeline within 3 days. And while this may seem perfectly fine, note that there is no requirement stating that the tradeline cannot be re-added at a later time. In fact, the credit bureau has no obligation to inform the furnisher that you have disputed the item at all so 30 days later when they report it again, it will show up on your credit reports again and you will be back at square one.