The foundation of all credit restoration services lie in the value of the credit repair dispute letter.
While not readily known by most average American consumers, you have the right to dispute any and all information that is listed on your credit report.
This right has been given to all of us through the Fair Credit Reporting Act and all of its subsequent revisions and amendments.
There are many permutations that the dispute can take - but at it's core, it is very simply a challenge filed by you, ( or by your assign - often times a credit repair firm or an attorney ) that essentially tells the credit bureau - " this information is not being reported correctly".
While most people assume that the credit bureaus ( and there are three major ones, with a smaller number of less important, yet still relevant small regional repositories ) have some sort of governmental or official status in reporting information on you as a consumer, nothing could be further from the truth! Credit bureaus are simply for profit, large corporate entities that maintain database files on American consumers, primarily for the purpose of selling this information to other large entities who lend us money.
The credit dispute letter simply leverages the legal rights that have been given to each of us to ensure fairness in the credit reporting system.
The bureaus are expected to maintain a high level of accuracy with their data, and as such, (being that you are expected to be the most familiar party to your personal financial history) - if errors are found on your report, the dispute letter seeks to rectify them through a written notice filed with the appropriate credit agency.
Credit clinics and even some unscrupulous attorneys have sought to exploit this law by filing redundant, random and repetitious dispute letters with the credit bureaus, in a vacant and often fruitless attempt to remove information from their client's credit reports.
While using the credit repair dispute letter is a very efficient strategy for fixing your credit report, using it without the proper strategy, or with abusive intentions will often times not only cause the dispute to be rejected, it can also hinder further attempts to restore your credit in the future!