In addition to re-establishing new credit accounts and making payments on time, restoring bad credit takes time, tenacity, and knowing something about how the credit bureaus and creditors work.
It Takes Time To Restore Bad Credit
Generally you need to give yourself anywhere from 3-12 months to see significant changes to your credit scores. Every month that you distance yourself from your credit problems the better your scores get – this is purely a function of how the credit scoring systems are calculating scores. But it should also make sense that with the score indicating how you are going to be with your future credit accounts that they would be better and better as you show more and more perfect credit history since your past problems.
Also, restoring credit scores and credit reports often requires sending letters to the credit bureaus: Trans Union, Equifax, and Experian about incorrect information on your credit report. By law, each dispute that you send in will take approximately 45 days to get resolved – this includes 30 days for the credit bureau to get an answer from your creditor about your dispute and 15 days for mail delivery to the various places that mail has to go to complete your dispute. Sometimes your dispute might require you to provide more information which would extend the time that it takes to work on your credit report.
Tenacity – Do Not Stop Working On Your Credit Report Until You Are Satisfied
Sometimes restoring credit takes redoing things that you have already done. The credit reporting system is not perfect and things get lost from time to time. Or, disputed items and situations need further information and documentation. No matter what in each case you will need to stay on top of things as you are the only one who have the most interest in fixing your credit report.
Regarding “lost” items that you have mailed – never send originals – always send copies. Sometimes you may have to make a notarized copy of something to verify that it is a copy of the original. You will also want to send things in the mail certified at times to make sure that items really get to where they need to get and so that you have a time stamp of the actions you are taking. Believe it or not, if a credit bureau cannot verify items that you are disputing within a specified time frame they must remove them from your credit report.
You are also going to get turned down for some of your disputed items because you didn’t present a satisfactory reason. That’s ok, resubmit your disputed items in a month or so and say it another way. Chances are you will get your point across and the credit bureaus will have to take some action and your creditor will either produce what they need to produce to verify your account or they won’t in which case their account information gets deleted from your credit report. So the bottom line here is hang in there and don’t let go.
Know How the Credit Bureaus And Your Creditors Work
We have already covered some of this. When you dispute items on your credit report, the credit bureaus have 30 days to get a response from the creditor whose information you are disputing. There is also time allowed for reasonable delivery of mail so the entire process to dispute an item on your report can take 45 days or so.
If the credit bureaus cannot verify the information on your credit report that you dispute they must remove the information from your credit report. Sometimes they may only adjust your account listing to show your disputed information and other times they may remove the whole listing. At the end of the dispute period and when changes are made to your accounts the credit bureaus will send you a new updated credit report that details the actions they took on your disputed accounts.
Creditors on the other hand are being inundated with credit account verification requests from consumers. In many cases creditors simply just don’t respond to the requests because they either no longer have the original account information, or they don’t have the staffing or the interest to do the research necessary to answer the sheer volume of requests that come their way.
Challenging What Is On Your Credit Report Is Your Right
Always keep in mind when you are trudging along restoring your credit – it is your right to challenge items found on your report. Inaccurate information can often be the difference between getting a mortgage or not. It could also mean the difference of hundreds of dollars to your budget with different interest rates. What is on your credit report is a big deal and you don’t have to wait for the natural progression of information to impact what your credit report says.
Nothing about credit repair or restoration is easy. It will take time and effort on your part and there are no guarantees that you’ll produce any changes at all. But, if you don’t try you’ll never know.
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