Simply telling the bureaus that the account is not yours will leave them no recourse but to investigate the validity of the item. Saying anything else may work but they love to send those pesky letters asking you to be more specific. Hope this helps!
Sorry! in response to ender this is my first time posting on this BBS. The above post was intended to answer Ender's question regarding how to dispute the charge off.
Re: Sorry! in response to ende I still don't understand the answer to my question.. or maybe myt question wasn't specific enough. I am asking whether or not it is worth it to try and dispute an item on CR as "NEVER LATE" and "NO CHARGE OFF" when there are indeed many late pays and charge off listed. Is this worth it, especially when the last activitiy would be dated back in 5/97??? If not, then I am going to just dispute it as "NOT MINE" which would just try get it deleted..
Re: not mine In my experience, using a phrase such as "Not mine" is best for seriously delinquent accounts (Charge-offs, collections, liens, etc.). You can say "Not mine" about your late payments as well but you run the risk of them completely deleting the account rather than just removing the late notations. If you dispute late payments with "I was never late" then they may just remove the derogatory information and leave the account on your reports as a positive trade line. But, like Marie said, if you want to keep it simple just say "Not mine".
