A charge off is a very detrimental mark for your credit score. Having this on your credit history will make getting approved for a new credit line very difficult.

On occasions when you do get approved, you will pay much higher interest rates or have to make a large down payment. This is the penalty the credit system imposes on people when they can not pay their debts.

This system does not recognize that catastrophic events occur. When someone is faced with the decision of feeding their family or making a payment, the choice is obvious.

Credit bureaus have caused a false belief that when a charge off happens there is no recourse for the individual. That person will have to pay the high interest rates and large deposits for 7 or more years. This is not true.

According to the Fair Credit Reporting Act any inaccurate or unverifiable listing must be corrected by the credit bureau. Often creditors are not willing to spend the money or time to verify non collectable debts.

Thus, when an investigation is granted the negative listing is often deleted regardless of accuracy. The difficulty we hear of comes in getting the investigation started.

This happens because the credit bureaus only motive to conduct an investigation is to be compliant to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The bureaus don’t earn any extra money from conducting an investigation and instead spend money that would otherwise be profit.

Credit bureaus are notorious for using stall tactics, this is done to discourage and frustrate the individual. The goal of the credit bureaus is to force the individual into giving up on the dispute process. Many people have frequently found it more effective to hire a professional firm to deal with the credit bureaus on their behalf.

A judgment on your credit report means you have been sued for payment of a debt. It is a legal proceeding that will give the creditor extra time to try and collect on the debt.

A judgment gives the debt collector up to 20 years to collect on a debt. This is beyond the 7 year statue of limitations that applies to most debts. Often judgments are granted on unsecured debts.

A new tactic that debt collectors have been using is renewing judgments. This gives the debt collectors an additional 20 years to try and collect payment after the first 20 years. This makes it possible for a judgment to follow you for the rest of your life.

A judgment will drastically reduce your credit score. Be aware that paying a judgment will not remove it from your credit report.

When you pay a judgment the listing will change to a satisfied judgment. This is still a negative mark and will hurt your credit score.

To remove a judgment from your credit report you should dispute the judgment. This means you are disputing the validity or accuracy of the judgment.

This is done directly with the credit bureaus. It is done by writing a credit repair letter to dispute the judgment.

If the judgment is not verified then it must be removed by the credit bureaus. It has been found that when negative listings are disputed they are often removed.

This happens because it costs the debt collectors money to verify a listing. Typically debt collectors do not want to spend money verifying listings.

It will be difficult to get the credit bureaus to actually conduct an investigation into your dispute. This is because it costs the credit bureaus money to conduct investigations.

This is the reason why credit repair services are often hired to dispute listings on behalf on an individual.

A lot of credit repair companies say they can fix any credit report. All the person has to do is hire the company and their credit problems are fixed. Is this true?

Unfortunately no, it’s not. There are fraudulent credit repair companies that prey on people with bad credit. It is said that fraudulent companies have taken over 50 million dollars from the consumers.

The reason for this is when your credit is damaged you pay high costs on new credit lines. Frequently people become desperate for a way to escape these high costs.

What about guarantees? When a credit repair company makes a guarantee you should use extreme caution. This company is probably a phony and only interested in collecting money from you, not actually repairing your credit.

Some credit repair companies are legit and can be trusted. These companies will battle to have your negative listings removed and your credit repaired. They are usually more powerful in getting the credit bureaus to respond to a dispute. This is because they are familiar with the credit bureaus and the tactics the bureaus use to avoid investigations.

When looking for a credit repair company, look for warranties or refunds if results don’t occur instead of guarantees. Also do your homework and see what is being said about the potential company by other people.

Credit bureaus are very resistant to the dispute process because it goes against the purpose of the bureaus. The bureaus purpose is to assign a numerical value based on past behavior to predict your future repayment behavior. As well it costs the credit bureaus potential profits when they conduct investigations into a dispute.

If you are tired of paying for a mistake made in the past I recommend repairing your credit. It is a good idea to hire a credit repair company that can throw their weight around and force the credit bureau to respond to the dispute process. I recommend Lexington Law firm they have been in business for over 15 years with proven results.