Removing Bad Payment History

If you are keen to remove bad payment history from your credit report this article discusses some options the average Joe can do which can then help improve their credit.

Firstly do not get sucked in by advertisers telling you that they can remove bad payment history off your credit report. These people promise you the world saying they can remove negative items off your credit report like late payments, charge-offs, collections and judgements, but that is simply not the case. Bankruptcies and judgements can only be removed with the passage of time. Do not believe anyone who tells you otherwise – they are just trying to scam you.

Next, get a copy of your credit report – you’re entitled to a free one every year – and go over it looking for any negative items that may still be showing on it but are out of date. If you find any obsolete items on there, you need to send a letter to the credit reporting agency and dispute the out of date item. Be sure to include copies of any receipts that can back up your dispute to help speed up the process. This is one way of removing bad payment history off your credit report, but the items must be out of date.

Another option some people attempt is to dispute some older yet accurate negative items that still appear on their report in the hope that the item can’t be verified by the credit reporting agency and so has to be deleted off the report. There is no way this would work for major negative items like bankruptcies or judgements.

The folk willing to try this will come across an item on their credit report – something like a late payment that’s been showing on their report for a while – and try to dispute it on the chance that perhaps the company involved may have gone out of business or that there may be some other reason why the negative item cannot be verified by the credit bureaus.

So they will choose a small sized late payment that’s been on their credit report for some time, send a letter to the credit bureaus disputing that particular item and hope that it can’t be confirmed as accurate by the credit agencies. The credit bureaus have to verify that the negative item is in fact accurate and have approximately 30 days in which to do this. If a creditor doesn’t get back to them or is no longer in business and therefore the item can’t be verified, the credit reporting agency has to remove the item off the report.

Removing bad payment history can help you improve your credit score. Do what you can to remove negative items that are out of date and realise that any major items on there will only fall off your report with the passage of time. They can’t be removed any other way – don’t believe anyone who tells you different.