Removing Collections from you Credit Report

Getting rid of unpaid collections from your credit report is not a hard task to complete, you basically have three options at your disposal. First you can just pay off the amount in full but this will still leave negative makrs on your credit report even though you paid off the debt. Second you can contact the collection agencies making the claims on your credit report and negotiate the amount owed and the terms in which you will pay it off. This is the smartest and most moral thing to do as you will be able to negotiate not only the amount owed but you might also be able to get the negative file off your credit report completely as if it never existed making a positive effect on your credit report. It’s important to know that some collection agencies will not agree to lower the amount owed or removing the file from your credit report.

The last option would be to dispute the negative file by contacting the credit bureaus through either mail, phone or their online dispute system, and requesting the negative file on your credit report to be removed due to inaccuracies. Credit bureaus generally put the file into investigations requesting the creditor or collection agency to provide proof that the debt is legit. Typically the creditors and collection agencies have thirty days to report back, failure to do so will result in the removal of the negative file from your credit report. This is known as a soft delete as it is still possible for the creditor/collection agency to provide proof to the credit bureaus after the thirty days resulting in the negative file being inserted back into your credit report, this typically does not happen as most creditors and collection agencies do not report anything after the thirty days has past.

Fix Your Bad Credit, Become Debt Free

Step 1:

Obtain a copy of your credit report from the three major credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and Trans Union), goto www.annualcreditreport.com to receive your free credit reports, you are able to obtain your credit reports for free once each year.

Step 2:

Highlight the negative marks on your credit report and prepare to dispute these files to the credit bureaus and/or the creditors and collection agencies.

Step 3:

You will need to either write a letter to the creditors/collectors explaining that the debt indicated ony our credit report is false and you have no knowledge of the accounts. This step can also be done online using the credit bureaus dispute system.

Step 4:

Now you will need to wait up to thirty days to find out if the negative marks have been removed or updated, do not get frustrated if all or some of your negative marks are not erased from your credit report. The creditors and collection agencies have thirty days to reply to your debt dispute and provide proof that the debt is accurate. If they fail to do so the negative file will be taken off your credit report.

Step 5:

Repeat steps three and four until you get the desired results, please note that there is no guarantee that you will remove all or any of your bad credit.