Adding a One Hundred Word Statement is Not a Good Credit Repair Tactic
http://greatsmallbusinessideas.com/articles/21997/1/Adding-a-One-Hundred-Word-Statement-is-Not-a-Good-Credit-Repair-Tactic/Page1.html
Stuart Hunter
Providing credit repair services since 1991, Lexington Law has helped over 500,000 clients legally take on their credit. Last year alone, Lexington Law helped clients remove over 600,000 negative items from their credit reports. By Stuart Hunter
Published on 9/11/2009
You have the ability to add a 100 word statement to your credit reports to explain the circumstances behind any negative listings. Unfortunately, it is very unlikely that this 100 word statement will have any effect on lenders and there is no chance that it will increase your credit score.
Adding the 100 Word Statement is Not a Good Credit Repair Tactic
Negative items on your credit reports have some of the biggest effects on your credit rating. A handful of delinquent payments can be the difference between getting approved for a favorable interest rate on a mortgage or other type of loan and being required to make a substantial down payment in order to even qualify for financing. Major blemishes like charge-offs, repossessions, and foreclosures have the potential to drop your credit score so much that you will have difficulty getting approved for credit at all.
So what's a person to do when there are damaging items on a credit report that should not be there? Credit reporting mistakes do happen and damaging information gets incorrectly added to peoples' credit reports very frequently. And what about negative listings that do describe actual events but there was a legitimate reason behind them? Is it fair to have to deal with a poor credit score for up to ten years or more when the dark spots in your credit history were completely outside your control?
The Fair Credit Reporting Act provides consumers with a few options when dealing with poor credit, and enforcing their right to a fair and accurate credit score. This includes the right to order free copies of your credit reports so you can see what information is being reported about you as well as the right to dispute items on your credit reports that you feel may be inaccurate, untimely, misleading, incomplete, ambiguous, unverifiable, biased or unclear.
Another antiquated option you have as a result of this act is the ability to add a 100 word statement to your credit reports explaining to creditors the circumstances behind negative items on your credit reports. The idea is that when referencing your credit reports, lenders will be able to consider the reasons behind these negative listings when considering a loan application.
What makes this statement antiquated is that these days, lenders rarely look at the individual listings in your credit reports. In fact, they may never see your reports at all so your carefully crafted 100-one hundred word statements would never even be read.
On top of that, lenders are primarily interested in your credit score, which does not take the one hundred word statement into account. No matter how reasonable your justification is for having negative items on your credit reports, your credit score will remain unchanged.
The only way to prevent negative items from lowering your credit score is to have them removed from your credit report. One option people have for attempting to do this is the credit bureau dispute described in the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Additional credit repair options are made available through a number of other consumer protection acts targeted towards creditors and collections agencies.
So what's a person to do when there are damaging items on a credit report that should not be there? Credit reporting mistakes do happen and damaging information gets incorrectly added to peoples' credit reports very frequently. And what about negative listings that do describe actual events but there was a legitimate reason behind them? Is it fair to have to deal with a poor credit score for up to ten years or more when the dark spots in your credit history were completely outside your control?
The Fair Credit Reporting Act provides consumers with a few options when dealing with poor credit, and enforcing their right to a fair and accurate credit score. This includes the right to order free copies of your credit reports so you can see what information is being reported about you as well as the right to dispute items on your credit reports that you feel may be inaccurate, untimely, misleading, incomplete, ambiguous, unverifiable, biased or unclear.
Another antiquated option you have as a result of this act is the ability to add a 100 word statement to your credit reports explaining to creditors the circumstances behind negative items on your credit reports. The idea is that when referencing your credit reports, lenders will be able to consider the reasons behind these negative listings when considering a loan application.
What makes this statement antiquated is that these days, lenders rarely look at the individual listings in your credit reports. In fact, they may never see your reports at all so your carefully crafted 100-one hundred word statements would never even be read.
On top of that, lenders are primarily interested in your credit score, which does not take the one hundred word statement into account. No matter how reasonable your justification is for having negative items on your credit reports, your credit score will remain unchanged.
The only way to prevent negative items from lowering your credit score is to have them removed from your credit report. One option people have for attempting to do this is the credit bureau dispute described in the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Additional credit repair options are made available through a number of other consumer protection acts targeted towards creditors and collections agencies.