Hello. I have 2 late payments on my credit report that i would like to get removed and i also just right now discovered from this forum that i could possibly get credit inquiries removed. 1. Should i send separate letters for each dispute inquiry? The same question for the prove it or remove it letter? 2. Should i send all the letters at the same time or wait between them? 3. Should i write the letters in hand or print them? If by hand should i write it on lined paper or computer paper. 4. Should i copy the letter samples from this forum or try to change the wording a bit so it is not completely the same? 5. Should i send the letters certified? 6. Should i dispute all inquiries that were denied or also for credit that was given?
If you are disputing late payments which are being reported by an OC, you have to realize that VALIDATION does not apply to an OC, so they have no obligation to provide you with any documentation that they are reporting correctly, they just need to perform a real investigation of the dispute. (i.e. prove or remove) NOW - if I was an OC, the best way for me to PROVE that I performed a REAL INVESTIGATION, and eliminate a Federal Court appearance, would be to PROVIDE documentation, because if you are able to provide it, then they can't say that you DIDN'T perform a REAL CONCLUSIVE investigation. But that's just me, I like to be on the winning side of law suits... 1. It's a matter of personal preference. Some prefer to do all things in one letter. Others prefer to do everything in separate letters. IF I think that it may be a letter that I may need to litigate, then I personally choose to use a separate letter, even if I send them in the same envelope, but that's my thinking. 2. Again, it's a matter of personal preference. How easy will it be for you to follow the multiple processes with multiple companies, and credit reporting agencies. Have you developed what that strategy looks like, and how you will track the progress of the process in all of the accounts? 3. Again, it's a matter of personal preference. But now my evil streak is thinking, if I write a completely illegible letter, and try to sue them for violating the law... Probably won't work... Again, unfortunately, I come out of the thinking process of every new 'friend' I meet, how long will it be before I have to consummate the relationship in Federal Court. I want letters that they can't argue about what it said. 4. Form letters are good, if you don't know what you're doing. Unfortunately, they know that YOU don't know what you're doing, and treat you that way. Their industry associations have spent a lot of time going over most of the sample letters and debunking them line by line to sift out what the law actually says. Validation is for TWO purposes, to verify the amount, character and legal status of the debt, that it doesn't include anything not authorized by the contract; and that you are the correct person that they are alleging that the account is for. If your form letter is asking for a lot of gobbledygook about other things, 99% of the time they are NOT relevant to validation. Caselaw has shown that if they are able to provide validation, they are PRESUMED to have the authority over the account, because the OC wouldn't provide them with the validation, if they didn't! I've only had ONE case in all of my years of being active that there was any legitimate argument to whomever was the legitimate person who was in possession of the account, and that was because 4 companies had the same account in the same week, and 1 started to report after they had not had the account for a week...
5. If it's not certified, it never happened. BUT that doesn't mean that it has to be Certified Mail. I tend to use an online facsimile account. You get instant proof that it was received at a specific minute. The best part I've found is that CAs forget the fact that a facsimile has a time-stamped receipt. 6. Again this is a personal preference, there is a lot of debate as to what to dispute and why. The best thing is to come up with your own strategy that you think will work best for you.
Thank you for your responses. OC means "original creditor" i assume. I could not find it in the Sticky thread on abbreviations. So they don't need to provide proof but would i then be allowed to ask for proof that an investigation was conducted? I read somewhere that if they respond saying it was valid that i should send a second letter asking a bunch of questions about the investigation like who was the employee who conducted the investigation and who was the person he talked to at the OC and the time the conversation took place ect. I saw no such sample letter in the sample section of the forum but would this then be another shot worth taking if they respond saying it was verified? I have no intention to go to court but would sending them in seperate certified letters make me better appear as though i may be a person who would and thus make them more likely to just remove the late payments to avoid hassle? I don't really have a strategy but i would very much like one. I have read various information but on this particular subject i'm having a hard time working out the best way to go about this. I want to get started as soon as possible though and from what i gather sending some sort of prove it or remove it letter is the first step which is what i am concentrating on at the moment. What had me confused is whether if i sent seperate letters but on the same day/week that it might send up some sort of red flag for them. I read in a book that i skimmed over that perhaps the credit report companies scan printed letters and can detect these sort of letters and send automatic responses but writing by hand would guarantee a person looks it over which i guess is what you want, or the book said you want. This was the line of thinking behind this question. So i should personalize the letters as much as possible? What information from the prove it or remove it sample letter do i need to make sure is still in the letter? Is that sample letter outdated and is there a better one i should use? Is there a lot of gobbledygook in the sample letter from this forum that i should remove? So basically the CRA asks the OC hey is this information valid. OC says it's valid. CRA tells me that the OC said its valid and then end of story? Do these prove it or remove it letters ever actually get real legitimate late payments removed? I think facsimile means fax which is interesting because i never thought fax was an abbreviation for something else. Does this mean if they send there response later than 30 days there is something i can now do about that scenario? So is faxing the letters the best way to send them? My goal is to improve my credit score as much as possible but would removing inquiries from credit i did receive and thus showing in the credit report backfire for those creditors who actually look over the reports rather than just look at a score because they notice that lets say i have a credit card from fakename but no inquiry from fakename or because i have more lines of credit than inquires?
No, the only LEGAL way to demand to know how an investigation was performed is discovery; which is part of the process after you've filed a lawsuit. There are form-letters that say any number of things, most of the time they aren't 100% correct. Which is why there's no replacement for writing your OWN letters after you've become intimately familiar with the law. The best answer on the gobbledygook is to not send any letter that YOU are not 100% sure what the specific legal basis of it is. So, if you don't realize that an OC doesn't need to verify, and you send an OC a standard CA validation letter with pages of attachments which say please provide proof that the OC has given you the authority to handle the debt. (Which since the OC is the OC, you can see how it comes across.) If you are sending to one company, do you want to spend approximately $5 a letter to send multiple different envelopes? There are a lot of books, and some have valid, legitimate information, and there are some which have invalid, illegitimate information... When a CRA can be sued for $100.00 - $1,000.00 per TRADELINE, per DISPUTE, if they send out an automatic response, just because the letter was typed, do you think the CRAs would still be in business? They may be dumb, but they're not stupid! With an account which is being reported by the OC, the process is the CRA asks the OC, they hit the glowing "Y" key on their keyboard, the CRA tells you that the OC says that it's valid. END OF STORY - UNLESS you know enough to build a case that you could take to court, and know enough about caselaw to be able demand that they reinvestigate. IF the account is with an OC, the only one who has a 30 day period to MAIL the results back is the CRA, they will, and the deadline becomes 45 days if you send anything that they can classify as new information after the original dispute is received. There are no other rules as to how often after something they have to respond, and an OC never has to respond. They just have to investigate, and let the CRA know the results of the investigation.
I think i am in over my head here. I read an article saying that it is possible to get late payments removed from your credit reports and then read further on the subject and found this forum. I am still very confused though and with my work schedule i am not sure i will have the time to study what seems to be an increasingly complex process. Is there a specific book or article you could recommend to me which after reading would enable me to make a decent attempt at removing these from my credit reports. or could you recommend a company which can go through this process for me at an affordable cost. The more i look into and read reviews about lexington law the more i believe them to be shady and expensive. I have a 90 day late payment for a student loan 2 years ago and a Charge-Off for a cell phone bill from verizon Wireless from 4 years ago. The student loan has been paid off and closed and the cell phone bill has been paid for as well. I would like to make an attempt to get these removed so that i can refinance a car loan and be in a good position for a mortgage a few years from now.
You can always dispute a late payment. It's a simpler process than the questions you were asking, though. First step, write a simple letter to the OC, asking for information on the late payment being reported. If there were unique situations at play, be upfront about them. Then send a letter to the CRAs to dispute the late payments. There is never a guarantee that anything will or won't be deleted. And you want to make sure that the trade line is more negative than positive. Sometimes an account that is negative, has positive qualities that outweigh the negative ones, i.e. age, an older account with one late payment, the age could affect score more than the late payment. Just keep in mind, the letter to the OC, may not give a response to you. On the CO, 4 years is still within the Document Retention Period. Most companies can easily get information from the past five years. You can dispute the CO, but the OC would be able to get almost any documents needed to conclusively verify the account.
