Bankruptcy

Credit Dispute Letters

By Richard K. Gustafson

I get a lot of inquiries from people asking about credit dispute letters. A lot of us are forced to deal with credit report inaccuracies. Sometimes the reports are inaccurate because they don’t reflect a bankruptcy discharge and that the balance is zero, or sometimes the reports mix up names, etc…

Whatever the reason, if the report is inaccurate, there are procedures for getting them corrected. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is the governmental agency charged with the responsibility of enforcing the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The FTC maintains a very informative website with a lot of information about FCRA requirements, see www.ftc.gov.

When you discover that your credit report is inaccurate, the first step is to send a letter to the credit reporting bureau who issued the report disputing the inaccurate information. This is called a “dispute letter.” The FTC’s website has a sample dispute letter. The letter should be tailored to your specific situation, but the sample letter is a good starting point. You can also hire a firm or organization to dispute the errors for you. Of course, you’ll have to pay fees. My firm has recently begun offering some post-discharge credit report dispute services for our clients.

Full post as published by Consumer Bankruptcy Blog from Legal Helpers on October 18, 2006 (boomark / email).