Is it Possible to Fix Credit Fast?

by Wendy Black Polisi on December 14, 2009

: Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Whether or not is possible to fix credit fast depends in large part on what the negative entries on your credit report represent. If many of the negative items being reported are errors, debts that have been discharged through bankruptcy, or have been reported for seven years; then it is easy to fix bad credit fast. If, on the other hand, the debts are valid, are still outstanding, or recent, then chances are there is little you – or any credit repair company – can do to fix your credit fast.

The most popular strategy taught for learning how to fix credit fast is to abuse the consumer dispute options granted by law. The credit reporting agencies are obligated to investigate any entry that a consumer disputes within thirty days of accepting the dispute and removing those items that are either invalid (errors) or those that can not be validated within thirty days. This resulted in the development of the “dispute blitz” strategy, whereby the debtor simply disputes every negative item on their credit report and then continues to do over and over again. Back in the days when most of the records were on paper, this technique worked very well to fix credit score fast and became quite popular. Consequently, both major creditors and the credit reporting agencies developed methods for dealing with this. These methods largely work so the “dispute blitz” rarely works today. (That is why we teach you other ways to fix credit score issues inside Credit Repair College.)

The first method is to simply refuse to accept disputes until more information is provided. This effectively breaks the “blitz” element of the strategy because all the disputes do not have to be accepted at the same time, thereby staggering the process. Second, today most creditors and collection agencies have all of their data – including the validating documents – in a digital format, meaning that retrieval of the documents is very quick and efficient, so valid debts can be quickly shown to be so.

Even if some debts are not validated within the thirty day period, their removal may only be temporary. Many large creditors and collection agencies now routinely resubmit all their outstanding debts to the credit bureaus at set intervals (monthly, quarterly, annually, etc.), so even if an item was removed due to untimely validation, it is likely to reappear on your credit report a bit later. Further, if the validation was delayed, once the validation is presented, then the investigation is closed and the dispute fails. (Obviously you need other strategies to fix credit report issues!)

While removing actual errors or things that should not be reported is fairly easy, removing valid debts is very difficult. Just because a valid item has been removed does not mean that it will stay removed and though you can dispute it again, it is likely that it will become an endless cycle of disputes and resubmissions until the debt is actually resolved and of course this process of disputes and resubmissions completely negates any chance of a quick solution to the problem.

Disputing can help you fix your credit score fast, but only in certain circumstances. Stay tuned for legitimate strategies you will want to know if you are interested in learning how to fix credit fast.