Thursday, October 30, 2008

What Is a Charge Off & How It Can Be Removed From Your Credit

By Jason Quinn

You have to have to dispute charge offs with the credit bureaus in order to remove them from your credit report.

This is accomplished by mailing a dispute letter to the credit bureaus. A dispute letter must be mailed to each credit bureau that is reporting the negative mark on your credit history.

Sending a dispute letter is your method of challenging that a listing is accurate or valid. There are many reasons to dispute a listing including; I have never paid late, not my account and reporting the wrong account balance.

You need to realize that credit bureaus rarely conduct an investigation because of one dispute letter. Frequently they will respond requesting more information about the listing.

The reason for this is that it only costs the credit bureaus money to investigate disputes. Thus they try avoiding conducting investigations.

As a result it is common for people to hire a credit repair company. This is because these companies can often get the credit bureaus to follow through on the dispute process.

It may be that credit bureaus are scared a credit repair firm will file a complaint with the FTC for violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act. I suggest hiring a credit repair firm if you have a number of negative marks on your credit or multiple charge offs.

What is a Charge Off and What Does It Mean

Charge offs occur once an account is delinquent and no payment is received for six months. It lets the lender charge the debt off of from their financial records.

It becomes a tax break for a creditor. The creditor then can turn around and sell off the delinquent debt to a collection agency and make a notation on your credit report that your account was charged off.

Then calls from the debt collectors will start. If the debt collector can not recover payment they will sell your account to another debt collector. How many hands this debt will travel through depends on the size of the debt.

Every agency that attempts to collect on this debt will be able to create a negative mark on your credit report if unable to secure payment. Often one charged off account will become multiple marks on an individual's credit report.

If your charged off account has traveled through a few different collection agencies then you should consider a credit repair firm. If you only have one charge off account then you can do it yourself, just be patient.

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