- Home
- Money and Finance
- Is It Possible to Remove Collections from Your Credit Report?
Is It Possible to Remove Collections from Your Credit Report?
- By Stuart Hunter
- Published Monday 30th 2009
- Money and Finance
- Unrated
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.
View all articles by Stuart Hunter
Depending on how much a credit claims you owe, even a single collections account on your credit reports can do serious damage to your credit rating.
Collections accounts for smaller dollar amounts don't weigh down your credit score as much, but if you have a number of these negative listings on your credit reports, it shouldn't come as a surprise when your credit score isn't as high as you would prefer it to be.
Regardless of whether a is reported for $100, $500, $1,000 or more, your credit score would likely be better if it did not show up on your credit reports at all. Just about everyone would want to have this derogatory credit listing cleaned up, but few realize there is something they can do about it. What they are not aware of is that there are steps you can take in an effort to delete collections accounts from your credit reports. In fact, Lexington Law, a consumer advocacy law firm with 18 years of experience helping over 1/2 million Americans work to improve their credit, reports that their clients had over 250,000 collection accounts removed from their credit reports in 2008.
You have a number of options when it comes to cleaning up your credit. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you can dispute with the credit bureaus any items in your credit reports you feel may be inaccurate, untimely, misleading, incomplete, ambiguous, unverifiable, biased or unclear (known as "questionable" items). Essentially, as the name of the act implies, you have the right to question any items in your credit reports you feel give others an unfair impression of your credit worthiness; including collections.
If your credit bureau dispute is unsuccessful or if the reported collections account doesn't fit the definition of a questionable negative item, there are still options available to you. Your creditors and collections agencies have the ability to remove the items they have added to your credit reports whenever they have reason to do so. On occasion, simply as a result of you asking nicely, they will agree to stop reporting a negative item. If a friendly request fails to produce results, there are more confrontational steps you can take that make use of your rights under consumer protection statutes such as the Fair Credit Billing Act and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
It isn't necessarily easy, but with time, effort, and proper knowledge, you may be able to remove collection accounts from your credit reports. Of course, if you do not have the time or the desire to attempt repairing your own credit, there are a number of reputable credit repair companies who will make use of their experience to aid you in working towards achieving your credit goals.
Collections accounts for smaller dollar amounts don't weigh down your credit score as much, but if you have a number of these negative listings on your credit reports, it shouldn't come as a surprise when your credit score isn't as high as you would prefer it to be.
Regardless of whether a is reported for $100, $500, $1,000 or more, your credit score would likely be better if it did not show up on your credit reports at all. Just about everyone would want to have this derogatory credit listing cleaned up, but few realize there is something they can do about it. What they are not aware of is that there are steps you can take in an effort to delete collections accounts from your credit reports. In fact, Lexington Law, a consumer advocacy law firm with 18 years of experience helping over 1/2 million Americans work to improve their credit, reports that their clients had over 250,000 collection accounts removed from their credit reports in 2008.
You have a number of options when it comes to cleaning up your credit. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you can dispute with the credit bureaus any items in your credit reports you feel may be inaccurate, untimely, misleading, incomplete, ambiguous, unverifiable, biased or unclear (known as "questionable" items). Essentially, as the name of the act implies, you have the right to question any items in your credit reports you feel give others an unfair impression of your credit worthiness; including collections.
If your credit bureau dispute is unsuccessful or if the reported collections account doesn't fit the definition of a questionable negative item, there are still options available to you. Your creditors and collections agencies have the ability to remove the items they have added to your credit reports whenever they have reason to do so. On occasion, simply as a result of you asking nicely, they will agree to stop reporting a negative item. If a friendly request fails to produce results, there are more confrontational steps you can take that make use of your rights under consumer protection statutes such as the Fair Credit Billing Act and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
It isn't necessarily easy, but with time, effort, and proper knowledge, you may be able to remove collection accounts from your credit reports. Of course, if you do not have the time or the desire to attempt repairing your own credit, there are a number of reputable credit repair companies who will make use of their experience to aid you in working towards achieving your credit goals.