All too often, I’m asked, “why do you have to do credit disputes every month, can’t you just do one dispute that will delete everything?” I should start off by letting you know that I am the Sr. Credit Advisor at Cobalt Credit Services in Seattle, WA. We are a Credit Repair and Credit Restoration firm. For most of our clients, we are charging a small monthly fee to work on their account, until they feel they’ve reached their Credit goals. That is where it gets hard for some people to understand, they think there is one miracle letter that can solve all of their Credit problems and I’m holding out on them to get them to stay on, paying monthly, as long as possible. If there was a miracle dispute letter, I would know about it, I promise you. I would instantly change our fee structure to some insane fee and fix your credit by tomorrow. But it’s not possible.
What is possible is constant and continuous disputes. Why? The dispute system is flawed, there is no real investigation being conducted. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1972, the law states that there must me a reasonable investigation conducted if if any account is disputed. It also states that they must re-investigate any account that you dispute if you give them a reasonable explanation of why you didn’t feel the last dispute was completed to your liking. What does this mean? It means that we’ve found the loophole to absolutely bombard the Credit Bureaus, Debt Collection Agencies and Creditors with disputes. We take this to the extreme, we dispute every account, every month. But not just to the Credit Bureaus, directly to the original creditor and debt collector as well. Yes, that’s a lot of paperwork, but it’s usually worth it in the end. We’re averaging 77% deletion within a 6 month period. The longest we will accept a client is for 12 months, and we’ve only have 1 out of every 40 clients stay on that long.
Our top competitor, which I shall not name (they claim to be a law firm), does some really dirty tricks to get their clients to pay the monthly fee for as long as possible. While our fees are virtually the same as theirs, this company doesn’t do 1/10th of the work we do. Why? They limit their disputes to 3 items with 1 credit bureau each month. They typically focus on Transunion because they are the easiest to get deletions from. But what does that mean for you? Say you have 9 negative items (the average is 16 negative items). These 9 items are each reported to the 3 Credit Bureaus – Equifax, Experian and Transunion. They are reported by 1) The original Creditor and 2) The Debt Collector (if the account was sent to collections). If you work with us, we would take ALL 9 items and send disputes to: 1) Equifax 2) Experian 3) Transunion 4) The original creditor 5) The Debt collector. We dispute all 9 items with all three bureaus and with the company that is reporting it to the bureaus. If you work with our competitor, they will only dispute 3 out of the 9 negative items and send disputes to: 1) One out of the three credit bureaus. This will cause the client to pay a lot more money then they have to.
So, why do we dispute every month and why do we dispute all the negative items each month? First off, I could ramble on about having a bunch of integrity, which I do, but that isn’t why. I wanted to be the most effective and this has proven to be the only way.
Here is an example of accounts that were disputed July 12th 2014 with Equifax. Pay attention to the CCS Collections. Yes, we got some deletions from other accounts this time, but the CCS Collections accounts are saying “Verified”
At this point, when an account is “verified” most Credit Repair companies and consumers give up hope. NO, this is not the end of the line, this is just the beginning. What do I do next? I ask the Credit Bureau to show me the paperwork that shows it’s verified, since I know they can’t, it gives me a much better shot at pushing a deletion. Because if they can’t show how they verified the account, they are in major violation of the law.
I responded to their Verified letter and this is the response I received on August 20th 2014:
YAY, IT WAS DELETED. So as you can see, you don’t ever want to just go with the first response from the Credit Bureaus and you never want to dispute just once.
I also always recommend that you hire a professional when working on your Credit Report to get real results. Keep in mind, there are TONS of consumer protection rights that you may or may not be aware of, but we don’t expect you to know all of them, and that is why we are here to help.
Are you plagued with bad credit and need some advice? Get in touch with our Credit Advisors today for a free no-risk consultation. 1-800-216-2725
