Cleaning Up Your Credit Report
Everyone should regularly monitor their credit report to ensure that the information on there is accurate and up to date.
The first step to doing that is to go to annualcreditreport.com to get a free copy of your credit report. You can do this once a year. This will not tell you your credit score – you have to pay for that – but it will tell you what is on your credit report.
You can get your credit report more frequently than that but you usually will have to pay for it. An exception is if you applied for credit and were denied, the company that denies you must tell you which credit reporting agency provided them with information which caused them to deny your credit. And then that credit reporting agency must provide you with a free copy of your credit report if you ask them for it within 60 days of being denied credit.
If there is inaccurate information on there you should dispute it immediately, in writing, by sending a letter explaining what is inaccurate about the report, both to the credit reporting agency and to whoever provided the credit reporting agency with the incorrect information.
Send these letters via certified mail with return receipt. This will show the date that you sent the letter, because if the credit reporting agency can not verify the negative information within 30 days, they have to remove it from your credit report.
If there is negative information on the credit report that IS accurate, you should contact the lender who provided the negative information, and attempt to work out a payment plan with them. If you can pay it all off at once, so much the better. However, ask that they remove the negative information from your credit report once they receive the payment, and get that in writing from them. And do NOT send the payment until you get their agreement in writing.