Hello
I finally got the courage to pull my husbands report and mine. My average is about 557, and hubbies is way low. Now how do I know which items would be better to try to pay for deletion or dispute?
A lot of what is on my credit are medical bills. They are not very old. And what is a little confusing is that I see the same amounts listed by multiple collection agencies. One even looks like its listed an account 4 times. And some of the bill showing up on my reports show different amounts on each report. Does this make it easier for me to dispute the items?
I also noticed that I have 2 judgments on my report. I wasn't aware of this. I have only been to court over one medical bill. What should I do about this? And one more question. Should I dispute the CRA first and then the CA if CRA verifies. Is this correct?
How to dispute items
Hi Bayle,
You should immediately dispute the account listed for 4 times by the same collection agency. First try validating this debt, and all others that you think are to be disputed.
Send debt validation letters to the collection agencies through certified mail, requesting a return receipt. You will get sample validation letter with this community, which you can use to write one of your own. After you receive the return receipt, dispute these items with the credit bureaus.
This puts the collection agencies within a time frame. Once the credit bureaus notifies the collection agencies of the dispute, the collection agency needs to verify the debt with the credit bureaus within 30 days. However, even before they can verify the debt with the credit bureaus, they will have to validate your debt. Else they will be in violation of Fair Debt Collections Practices Act. If they fail to validate the debt with you, they won't be able to verify it with the credit bureaus too. Thus, this will result in deletion of the item. However, you should remember that this won't work out with the original creditors.
As for the judgments, you can send validation letters to the collection agencies.
Thanks,
Aaron