In order to remove derogatory items from your credit report you have to dispute the credit bureaus. There are two options to do this.

1. Write a dispute letter

This option will require you to write a dispute letter. In this letter you will need to identify the negative mark and provide and explanation as to why it is inaccurate.

Reasons often include; account paid in full, item is out of date, information is wrong and etcetera. You will need to send this letter to every credit bureau.

2. Hire a professional credit repair company.

Using this method the service will create a dispute letter on your behalf and send it to the bureaus. These services have advanced techniques to remove negative credit such as; debt validation, creditor direct intervention, and escalated dispute information requests.

I recommend hiring a service if you have multiple bad credit items on your report. However if you only have one or two items then you can do it yourself.

Upon receipt of your “valid” dispute letter the bureaus will hold an investigation. If the negative mark can not be verified then the bureaus must remove it from your credit history.

Be aware that often bureaus will use stall tactics to avoid holding an investigation. This is a result of bureaus only spending potential profits when they conduct an investigation.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act says the bureaus must investigate a disputed listing and if it is found unverifiable it must be removed from your report. The difficulty is getting the bureaus to find you dispute letter valid.

If you are experiencing trouble with this I recommend hiring a professional. However you can get the bureaus to deem you letter valid with some persistence.

Frequently an investigation will result in a bad credit item being removed. This happens because many lenders are not willing to spend the resources to verify debts.

However you decide to dispute your credit, negative marks can be deleted. You do not have to wait the full seven years for these marks to be removed.