Okay. Well, I'm afraid I'm going to need someone to hold my hand on this on since I'm nervous and afraid of screwing things up. I guess I will hold off on the CAP ONE's for a little while until I figure out what I'm going to do. In the meantime, I think i will try to tackle the smaller stuff on my report like the small collections. Some quick questions (again): 1. Which of the many helpful sample letters do I send if I haven't recv'd any correspondence regarding these debts on my CR's? 2. Is there a way to dispute them on line without having to pay for a service on the CB websites? These are not CC's but rather they appear to be small medical bills and one electric company that I do not recognize at all.
The first go around of requests should be done without contacting the furnishers directly. You're likely to have some just not respond. However, if you go poking a stick at them right off the bat you'll be on the radar so to speak. Don't send them anything right now. Reserve those communications for the ones who verify the information. This is also wise because anything they verify which is inaccurate can be leveraged against them in a later communication. Don't dispute online. The "boxes" are not really sufficient unless your doing not mine style disputes. Nothing against those but, they don't provide anything after verification (violations). Just write to the credit reporting agencies and do the requests that way.
So, I should send a letter to the credit bureau's. The letters I've skimmed over in the "sample letters" appear to all be for the furnishers directly. Do you have a sample letter for the credit agency's? Can I send a letter about more than one collection item at a time or will this send red flags as well? I'm sorry I keep asking all these questions. I just need to have details so I can proceed with confidence.
Dispute them all at once. You get the most deletions in that fashion. Just write a letter and go line by line with each account. Pick out something that is wrong with the item or absent in terms of data fields. Dates of status, account history, and account status are good places to start.
Maybe this will help: the below link is to the guidebook from the Federal Trade Commission. This is a good overview of the dispute process, and it inculdes a good standard sample letter. http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre21.pdf Don't be intimidated by this, it is fairly easy (and only scary at first)! You may want to look at the websites of the three credit reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian and TransUnion) as they also have dispute letter templates on the websites.
