The first thing you should do, is to pull all three credit reports. This is very important; you have to pull the reports to see what is wrong. You can get one free report a year at www.annualcreditreport.com. You can also get a report from each of the bureaus if you have been denied anything due to your credit, or if you are unemployed. You can also use a credit monitoring service like chaseidentityprotection.com (you do not have to be a Chase customer to get this).
After you have seen what is on your report, find out what is incorrect. This includes any accounts that are not yours, incorrect balances, payment schedules–pretty much anything that is incorrect. Write it all down so you can keep track of what you are doing, and what you have done.
Start writing letters to the collectors/creditor and also to the credit bureaus disputing the information. Check your state laws on reporting as well. I have found out in my state that payday loans are not to be reported to bureaus, but they try to get around it. Dispute these accounts if you have any that are not allowed to be reported. Send the company, and the credit bureau, a certified letter stating that you want them to remove the file from your report and tell them why.
Make sure to always send everything certified mail, and keep the receipts. State on the letters to companies that you are giving them 30 days to respond; they usually will. If they do not send you information actually verifying that you signed up for the service or whatever it may be, send them another letter. Keep all correspondence. It works a lot quicker if you correspond with the bureaus and the creditor companies, you can get a lot more accomplished.
One final thing: if you want the credit collectors to stop calling you just state it in the letters. If you send them a certified letter stating that they can only contact you via mail, they cannot call you any longer. If they do, they are illegally contacting you, and further action can be taken. Make sure to keep track of every call.
Contact information for credit bureaus:
Equifax Information Svcs
P.O. Box 740256
Atlanta GA 30374
800-685-1111
Experian
P.O. Box 2002
Allen TX 75013
888-397-3742
TransUnion LLC
P.O. Box 34012
Fullerton CA 92834
800-916-8800
I hope this information can help a few of you. It has taken me a long time to figure out some of the things that work and some that doesn’t. It is hard and time consuming, but well worth it.
