I'm stomped with a few trade lines reported by original creditors. I've been reading and researching for the past few months, and specifically on original creditor charge-offs for the past week or so and there's so much confusion surrounding approaches. I understand that no method is necessarily right or wrong and every case varies. I'm trying to explore dispute methods I can use for charged-off trade lines. From what I understand, you can't dispute an original creditor until you've requested an investigation with the CRA first? I've read OC validation is a method to use but then there's that whole "you can't validate with an OC" debate. So, I'm not sure which type of letter to use? Anyone have success stories with getting OC charge-offs removed? Please share!
You can dispute anything with anyone at any time. The difference is that, unlike a Collection Agency, an Original Creditor is not required to provide validation of the debt (documentation) to respond to your dispute. The simplest is to just write a letter to them saying something to the effect of "could you please explain this tradeline to me?" With a CRA dispute, the data that the data furnisher verifies to the CRA becomes 'actionable', that just means that now if they verify something that is incorrect, you could take them to court to try to collect $100-$1000 for their reporting of incorrect credit information. Without a CRA dispute, any dispute between you and the data furnisher is 'non-actionable', which means they are exempt (have an affirmative defense) to any legal action on any violations of.
