Second Round.

As far as the validation letters you sent to the CA's, just be sure to wait out the 30 days before sending anything else to them.

You're getting valdation confused with disputing. Validation letters go to the collection agency, and you dispute with the CRA's. A CRA cannot and will not validate for you. If you want to dispute certain items on your credit report, go ahead. Just don't dispute more than 3-5 items at a time. Method a handful of us on the board use is disputing online. It's quick, zero-cost, and you get your results back online instead of having to wait for the mail.

 

No, your score has not gone up. All it means is that the information is being reported as disputed. Don't be in such a hurry! it can take at least as long for you to repair your credit as it did to get is messed up!

Applying for credit cards right now will lower your score even more. Every inquiry from a creditor takes you down a couple points.

Write the letters like we all do and wait the thirty days for results. And don't look for any easy fixes -- it's going to take a while...

 

You should keep updated on ALL of your credit reports -- you don't need Credit Watch to do this. You can order copies from each bureau. When you dispute, you'll usually be given a new copy of your credit report every time womething you dispute is updated or deleted.

Oh, and yes, you should wait until you get the credit reports before you send a letter to the Credit Bureau. How can you know what's listed until you see your report? They won't take you seriously, especially since chances are that some of the negatives on one report won't be listed on others! You'll also want to watch for inaccuracies -- there is a marked difference normally in each report -- one may list Account A as a chargeoff while another says "in collection". You'll want to pinpoint the inaccuracies to dispute them individually.

 

To LizardKing,
A question for you. If you send a dispute to the CRA on a debt, and they verify that the debt is yours, should you send a request for validation to the CA itself? I guess I am answering my own question here, but if they refuse to validate, or don't validate all together, then what is the next step?

If they don't validate, and they continue to report this debt, then what are your options?

 

In the case of this particular creditor, they are named Medclr. This debt is six years old and it only shows up on my Equifax report. I called up the company on found out it is not Medclr, but actually NCO.

They claim that one bill is for my daughter, the other is for my son. The thing about this is for the first bill, we had Medicare insurance. The second, I had a HMO. Neither ever paid a thing on this. They don't call me about this bill and I haven't received any letters on my son's bill. Should I even bother dealing with this?

I have had dealings with NCO before for other accounts, when I send requests for verification, they go away. This is the only thing that they have on any of my credit reports. What should I do?