Adding a One Hundred Word Statement is Not a Good Credit Repair Tactic
http://www.netarticles.org/articles/4781/1/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 11/9/2009
Consumers have the option to add a 100 word statement to your credit reports in order 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 improve your credit score.
Adding the 100 Word Statement is Not a Good Credit Repair Tactic
Negative items on your credit reports make some of the largest hits to your credit rating. A few late payments can make the difference between getting a good interest rate on a loan and being required to make a substantial down payment just to qualify for financing. Major derogatory items like charged off accounts, repossessions, and bankruptcies have the potential to drop your credit score so much that you will have difficulty getting approved for credit, regardless of the terms.
So what are the options if there are negative listings on a credit file that shouldn't be there? Mistakes do happen and damaging information gets incorrectly added to peoples' credit reports all the time. And what about negative listings that are accurate but there was a legitimate reason behind them? Is it really fair to have to deal with a low credit rating for up to 10 years or more when the damaging listings on your credit reports were essentially out of your control?
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) provides consumers with a few options for dealing with bad credit, and enforcing their right to a fair and accurate credit score. This includes your right to order free copies of your credit reports as well as the right to request verification of any 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 the Fair Credit Reporting 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 looking at your credit reports, lenders will be able to take into account the reasons behind these negative listings when considering your loan application.
What makes this statement antiquated is that these days, lenders rarely consider the individual items in your credit reports. In fact, they may never see your reports at all so your carefully penned 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 100 word statement into account. No matter how good your justification is for having negative listings on your credit reports, your credit score will remain unchanged.
The only way to keep negative items from affecting 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 are the options if there are negative listings on a credit file that shouldn't be there? Mistakes do happen and damaging information gets incorrectly added to peoples' credit reports all the time. And what about negative listings that are accurate but there was a legitimate reason behind them? Is it really fair to have to deal with a low credit rating for up to 10 years or more when the damaging listings on your credit reports were essentially out of your control?
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) provides consumers with a few options for dealing with bad credit, and enforcing their right to a fair and accurate credit score. This includes your right to order free copies of your credit reports as well as the right to request verification of any 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 the Fair Credit Reporting 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 looking at your credit reports, lenders will be able to take into account the reasons behind these negative listings when considering your loan application.
What makes this statement antiquated is that these days, lenders rarely consider the individual items in your credit reports. In fact, they may never see your reports at all so your carefully penned 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 100 word statement into account. No matter how good your justification is for having negative listings on your credit reports, your credit score will remain unchanged.
The only way to keep negative items from affecting 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.