What Happens In The Credit Dispute Process When Rebuilding Your Credit

When you start your journey of rebuilding your credit, one of your first steps is your credit dispute.  You will write a letter that lists, in detail, all items you find that you need to dispute. You will briefly explain why the items doesn’t show on your credit report.  The FCRA requires the Credit Reporting Agencies (CRA’s) to investigate your dispute and if the lender can not verify the accuracy of the account within 30 days, the CRA must delete the account from your credit report.

Here is the credit dispute process step by step:

• Mail your letter certified mail, return receipt requested. (make sure you keep a copy of everything you send them
• The credit bureau receives your letter with your credit dispute. They must sign for this and now you have proof of when the 30 day time limit is reached.
• The CRA starts your dispute file. They are required to keep documentation of their efforts and all of the documentation you may have sent them.
• The CRA forwards your dispute information to the lender.  You may think the CRA spends a lot of time determining how to handle your dispute but reality is your disputes are handled so quickly and pushed through the system.
• The lender is now given 30 days to respond to the dispute and to verify the information they are reporting.
• If the lender verifies the information is correct, you will get a response from the CRA saying the tradeline is verified.  If the lender fails to respond within the 30 days, the CRA must remove the entire tradeline from your credit report.  The lender may also update information that is incorrect.
• The CRA will send you a notification of items that are verified, updated and deleted.

Now, here is the point where you will need to evaluate your next step. The lender may not have provided proof to the CRA and you may need to be more diligent and file the dispute again.

Remember the CRA’s receive thousands of disputes per day. They do not have the time to carefully evaluate each dispute and the process is largely automated. It is unreasonable to expect the process will be handled accurately and completely the first time so don’t be taken aback when something you know is incorrect is verified.  Just start again and move forward.

The process of rebuilding your credit takes time but can happen with persistence. If you need to file a credit dispute more than once, this is very common so don’t feel you are ‘unlucky’.  Just move forward and you will see things drop off or get corrected.