I have been reading about credit repair and apparently there is a technique credit repair places do to swamp credit bureaus with so many disputes that they can’t respond in the 30 day time frame require, which results in the item being totally removed. Does this work, and how do you do it?
I’ve seen a similar discussion on a certain credit discussion forum I used to follow before I got a new hobby.
What you’re describing was tried one winter… I believe the Christmas season of '02… everyone on a certain credit discussion forum who was doing repair agreed to send in their disputes all during the same time period.
The theory was that it would overload the system, ALSO they chose the 30 days in the US calender with the least normal work days in it.
Whether or not it worked is up in the air; I never really saw any evidence that those disputes were any more or less likely to be accepted or denied than others.
I am personally rather skeptical.
In any case, an individual CANNOT do this; you only have one file with X number of tradelines, and once you have an item under dispute, you can’t really dispute it again.
Even if you had 50 tradelines and disputed every single one of them, it’s NOT going to bring any Big 3 credit bureau to its knees. Do you know how many disputes those guys get in a day?
Seriously, the idea is goofy, but I’ve had worse ideas, so I won’t blame you.
I suppose if you disputed ALL the items on EVERYONE’s credit reports all at once, you’d hose things up, but that would require you to engage in rather extensive identity theft. If you had the resources to mail 100 million dispute letters out,
- I expect you wouldn’t need credit anyway.
- If you did, you could just buy your accounts from your former creditors, or buy your creditors, or simply sue them until they gladly signed an NDA to get you to leave them alone. Even if you ran into a bank you couldn’t buy or bully, you could probably bribe one of their officers to fix your file.
I would think doing this would just slow everything down, not speed it up. That is to say, I don’t think they CRBs would say “Ahh…screw it, just give’m what they’re asking for.” I’d imagine they would just sit there and pick through each and every request one by one just like they normally do. You’d probably even see press releases about it on the news asking people to stop as it not going to speed things up, it’s just going to make it take longer to process legitimate disputes. Instead of looking at it like the crowd rushing the gates at Woodstock (and they eventually gave up and let everyone in free), look at it like a giant snail mail DOS attack.
It’s worth noting that it is not the CRB which must respond in thirty days, it is the creditor. If you’ve got a dozen credit lines from ten different creditors and you dispute them all, all the credit bureau does is forward the disputes to the ten different creditors and wait 30 days for confirmation. If they don’t get anything back, they take the item off your report.
As an aside, a post on one of the boards that followed this quoted a CSR at one of the big three CRAs as having said they have 7 minutes, total, to investigate, decide on and document each dispute.
This probably doesn’t have anything to do with the OP but I thought I would share. When my wife and I got married, we applied for a mortgage and were quickly turned down. That was fine because I didn’t want a house at the time but I was curious so I got my credit reports. It turns out that they were hopelessly entangled with my father’s (who you don’t want to be entangled with). They had me listed on credit cards issued before I was born and married to his (ex)wife. We share the same first name, last name, and middle initial but go by our middle names. I started calling the bureaus, explained what the problem was and they gave me a special number to call for that sort of thing. When I reached that division of the first credit bureau, the woman basically just said “What do you want me to remove?” At first, I was pointing out my father’s info but then a light came on. “What do you want me to remove huh?” I had her go through the report and delete every negative entry if it was a mistake or not. The other two agencies did the same thing.
I have no idea if that would ever work again or not but it was cool. I have my own excellent credit now anyway.
But, IIRC, a “response” does not equate to investigation and conclusion. A response that fufills the within 30 days requirement can simply be an aknowledgement by the CC of the dispute. So I don’t really see how this overloading you speak of would work in most cases.
niblet,_head,
With all due respect to you personally, I am afraid your recollection has failed you.
If you review the following link:
you will note the presence of the following:
==quote
(A) In general. If the completeness or accuracy of any item of information contained in a consumer’s file at a consumer reporting agency is disputed by the consumer and the consumer notifies the agency directly of such dispute, the agency shall reinvestigate free of charge and record the current status of the disputed information, or delete the item from the file in accordance with paragraph (5), before the end of the 30-day period beginning on the date on which the agency receives the notice of the dispute from the consumer.
==unquote
Thirty days, prove it remove it, if it’s inaccurate, fix it.
Sounds good to me!
I will also point out that this works also on some very old debts that are more or less valid. You may now be be getting around to “fixing your credit” and see a 5year old unility bill that you might have really failed to pay. Or not, memory is hazy. Dispute it. Often the dentor only keeps records back so far.
However, that being said- don’t be a jerk. If the debt is less than 3 years old, and is legit- pay it, don’t dispute it. Too many of these crappy credit repair co suggest disputing every debt. Don’t, unless it’s questionable, you don’t remeber it, or it’s very old.
Sometimes you can contact the debtor and make an offer, say you’ll pay off the actual charges if they forgive the penalties and interest. If so, discuss how the paid-off debt will be reported, also.
Side note:
If you get your creditor to sign a confidentiality requirement, then three months later dispute the debt… the CRA should be unable to verify and you should lose the tradeline on your report.
Many creditors have a “we aren’t allowed to take it off your credit report” policy, but no “we don’t do confidentiality agreements” policy.
Disclaimer:
Never had to use this one in real life. Should work, but never tried it.