help clean up credit report

How Do I Clean Up My Credit?

An Actual Case Study For A Real Client- Part 3

by Vincent Polisi on February 25, 2010

In the prior post, I began responding to the questions asked by one of our readers at FinanceTheDream.com. The questions Candace asked were:

1. What happens to the credit score when debt validation letters and the pay for delete process is used?
2. When derogatory items are removed, does your credit score go up or down?
3. When derogatory items are removed, does it show that I have a shorter time length of credit history?
4. Can I get paid collection accounts removed?
5. How Do I get the account numbers from the collection agency without admitting the debt?
6. How long will it take for my score to improve?

Questions 1 & 2 were answered in How Do I Clean Up My Credit Report?
Questions 3 & 4 were answered in How Do I Clean Up My Credit Report Part 2?

Now, we are going to address questions 5 & 6.

Q: How Do I get the account numbers from the collection agency without admitting the debt?

A: First, getting an account number on a collection account does not have anything to do with “admitting the debt”. Second, there are a number of ways to get the account number. The easiest is to pull the information directly from your Equifax Credit Watch Gold with 3-in-1 Monitoring account. This way, you don’t have to deal with a nasty collector on the phone. By law, collection agencies are required to send you notification up front about their intent to collect a debt. This letter will contain information on the original creditor, the account number, the balance owed, ways to make payment and your ability to dispute the collection within 30 days before collection efforts start or the collection is reported to the collection agency.

Let’s assume you threw that letter away and don’t have it. Traditionally, collection agencies will engage in massive deforestation efforts and bombard you with letters and envelopes referencing the collection. All documentation from a collection agency will have the account number on it.

What I personally do is use the information provided through myEquifax Credit Watch Gold with 3-in-1 Monitoring account. In this way, I don’t deal with collectors and I get accurate information. The collection agencies are required to provide this to Equifax when they report an account. Additionally, you can use the debt validation method. Collection agencies are required to provide you this information. You can learn more about the debt validation method by watching our #1 Secret To Credit Repair.

Q: How long will it take for my score to improve?

A: There are many answers to this question because there are so many variables. The short answer is today, tomorrow, a week from now, a month from now, several months from now, never. Another great answer, huh?

Ok, here’s the deal, it depends on what you are doing. If you are getting derogatory accounts removed, the answer is as soon as the derogatory account is removed. If you are talking about paying off a loan or credit card, the answer is that it will improve when the creditor posts it to your credit report. If you are talking about a Rapid Re-Score, the answer is from a few hours to 96 hours generally speaking. The best way to know when you score will improve is to use Equifax Score Watch. This service enables you to run multiple scenarios and different simulations based on YOUR actual credit report. There is no better gauge as to the impact of your credit restoration efforts than Equifax Score Watch. You simply cannot affect the fastest possible score increase without it or know how to prioritize your efforts otherwise. As a result, you can waste a lot of time, spin your wheels and get extremely frustrated. If you want to handle credit restoration like a pro, you’ve  got to use what the pros use. If you are serious about credit restoration and having clean credit, you have to have:

Equifax Credit Watch Gold with 3-in-1 Monitoring

and

Equifax Score Watch

and, obviously, a subscription membership to Credit Repair College so you can see our step by step videos on how to handle every aspect of credit repair.

otherwise, you are wasting time and money. ;) Let us help you fix credit score issues today!

As always, if you have any questions or comments, please post them in the comment box below.

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How to Clean Up Your Credit Report

by Vincent Polisi on October 6, 2009

The big question we often get asked is, “How do I clean up my credit report?” The most important strategy in any credit restoration or credit repair program or plan is to begin by developing a comprehensive plan to fix your credit report.

There is no quick fix credit report repair solution despite what you may be told and sold. Credit restoration and credit repair require many different strategies and techniques based on what your particular situation is. So, to begin, develop a comprehensive plan to clean up your credit report. It should be a step by step plan with the ultimate goal being clean credit.

Before you can do that, you need to understand what type of credit information you are dealing with. Start by getting copies of your credit report from all three credit repositories, Equifax, Trans Union and Experian. Then, review the credit information that is being reported for accuracy. This is a critical first step for those wanting to know how to fix credit.

Most credit reports contain inaccurate items so to begin to clean up the credit report, you want to immediately target the truly inaccurate items that you can prove through documentation to be inaccurate credit information.

A good way to get some forward momentum towards credit repair and credit restoration is to immediately work on items that are inaccurate that you know you can get corrected.

After reviewing the credit information that is being reported, the next step in a comprehensive credit repair and credit restoration plan to help super charge cleaning up your credit report is to begin generating new positive good credit. This takes into consideration a long term view in the credit repair and credit restoration processes because once the new accounts are created, it will take some aging or what lenders call seasoning of the accounts before the true benefit is realized.

In other words, you will need a track record of paying these new accounts on time so that you can get this new positive credit information reporting and reflecting in the score. This is an integral part in a comprehensive credit restoration and credit repair plan to help fix your credit report and it needs to be initiated as quickly as possible so the aging or seasoning process can begin.
While you are working to clean up your credit report with other strategies, this strategy is slowly but surely helping fix your credit report and score, month after month, through on time payments.

The next step to clean your credit report up is to identify all of the derogatory credit information that is accurate. In other words, these were the things that you legitimately did not pay. As you undoubtedly have seen from the myriad of credit restoration and credit repair companies that are all over the Internet, disputing legitimate derogatory credit information is the number one technique that companies employ on your behalf to fix credit report items listed as derogatory.

They do this because it is the only thing that a company can legitimately do on your behalf to help clean up credit report items that are derogatory. Some may argue that a company can negotiate lower settlements but this is not part of a credit repair or credit restoration plan because it does not positively impact your credit score or help fix credit report issues.

It is part of debt elimination plan, not a credit repair or credit restoration plan. In fact, in many cases, it is actually detrimental in your effort to clean up your credit report because many lenders will actually annotate the account to the effect that an amount less than agreed or borrowed was accepted as settlement for the debt.

That isn’t credit repair or credit restoration. You may have saved some money on the reduced amount but you didn’t fix your credit report and oftentimes the new derogatory credit information can negatively impact your credit repair and credit restoration efforts by lowering your score or influencing an underwriter to make a judgment call to decline your loan application.

So, once you have identified all of the legitimate derogatory credit information, systematically begin the dispute process. Stay tuned, in our next post in this series, we will cover the myriad of ways to legally get legitimate derogatory credit information removed from your credit report. This is one of the best, least expensive and fastest ways to clean up your credit report.

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