But it's up to you to start the dispute process. No one will do it for you. The three major credit bureaus will only look into the matter if and when you claim the facts are in errors. Sometimes, they will even brush aside your disputes and brand them 'frivolous' and without merit. In this case, your best case is to proceed with more vigor to challenge errors showing up on your credit history.

You have every right to dispute your credit report simply by writing a letter and informing a credit bureau that you want to assert your rights under the FCRA, which stands for the Federal Credit Rights Act.

If there is a charge off in your credit report which is clearly not yours, then this will relfect badly on your credit rating, and will definitely wrognly lower your credit score when you apply for a loan or a credit card.

You have the right to write a dispute letter and demand that this entry be taken off your credit report due to the facts of the matter: note if the debt had been successfully paid and simply not reported correctly or if this could have been an entry of someone else.

A delinquent payment will likely stay on your report for a period of time (probably 2 years) but will eventually be removed automatically due to the passage of time and the fact that the FCRA requires the credit bureaus to expunge outdated information like this in a timely manner. If they don't, demand that they do and require them to send you proof that your credit report has been updated correctly.

Maybe one of your creditors was paid in full after the fact but simply forgot to update the files to your account. It happens. And you have the right to make it right.

Sometimes, the U.S. Postal Service may misdirect a payment, or the creditor may have had a change of address forwarding order expire. I know that this has happened for cdertain in the past, and the loan payment was reported as past due although it was submitted early. A 100-word statement was able to be added to the credit reports in question and the past due delinquent payment seemed to have no derogatory effect on the FICO credit score.

Remember: correct information that is of a negative nature that you find in your credit report cannot be disputed off your report. Don't listen to anyone who tells you otherwise. It will remain there until enough time has passed that if "falls" off your report -- probably in as little as two years. The worse the negative credit is, say bankruptcy or foreclosure, then that negative information may take upwards of 10 years to disappear from your credit history. But if any information is inaccurate, yes, you can dispute it and get it removed.

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