I've read in a number of threads that there's apparently some debate about whether disputes raise your credit score or no. Here's my experience that contributes to the debate: My Equifax score was a 622 at the end of April. This was with about 11 years of credit, two satisfied judgments on record, three 30 days late payments (2 in last year). Credit card balance was reported as $8000. I disputed all the late payments and my balance dropped to $2,000 b/c AMEX updated their accounts. I re-checked my score yesterday later and my Equifax score was 674. What a difference! I have a question: all the late payments are still marked as "pending" and Equifax says they haven't received a response from the company. The 30-day period that Equifax has to investigate my file ends in a week. If they don't get any info from companies by that date, what does that mean? will they take off the derogs?
Disputes only raise your score on EQ. It doesn't work for EX or TU. They will either delete the lates, or delete the TL's. Its a coin toss, I have had both happen.
while your account is in dispute, your score will go up...once they verify it, your score might go up or down.. it all depends. If you don't get any response from CRA regarding your lates, you probably will want to send them another letter saying :"you had 30 days, didn't respond, you must delete" Now keep in mind that they might delete the entire tradeline.
Fine by me if they take off the tradeline. So can one conclude that you can raise your EQU score artificially by disputing some problematic items right before you apply for credit (say a week?) I'll keep you all updated on how it's going.
Actually, I went to a mortgage seminar on "Rapid Resolution" credit repair. It was hosted by a credit agency that performs thousands of them. They said that the quick repairs only raise scores about two-thirds of the time. Unfortunately, updating derogatory accounts can actually lower your score in the wrong situation as the updated accounts get re-aged in the scoring system. Also, if you dispute an account and it gets verified with no change, that can also lower your score because of re-aging in the scoring model. Its a tricky science. Much depends on the type of dispute/resolution you are trying to resolve and the age of the account in question. The biggest complaint was that changing an old unpaid charge-off to a paid charge-off will actually lower a person's score in most situations. Personally, my scores dropped dramatically during my dispute and repair process. It was only after I got the very last derogatory account removed from each credit report that my scores really spiked upward. If you want scores in the mid to high 700's, you need to clean up everything and keep the older tradelines open.
thanks for the advice, that adds a twist I wasn't aware of. Is that not illegal though? If the debt or the late payment took place 2 years ago, how can it be made to have greater weight if it was verified? Can you not dispute that as well?
You can't dispute FICO. Its something within their top secret mathematical equation that makes that happen.
Rapid Rescore that is offered by the lenders is kind of like quick disputes. It costs somewhere around $59 bucks per tradeline. So if you have same tradeline with all 3 CRA's it will be 59/each. Keep in mind that when you do rapid rescore you will kind of loose the power to really dispute the trademarks on your report. Once they verify it, thats it. You paid your 59 bucks for basically same thing you could do yourself. Also, keep in mind that when you do rapid rescore, and the info comes back verified, they won't continue disputing for you like you would do it yourself. Good luck
