The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) gives consumers the right to dispute item(s) found on their credit reports that are believed to be inaccurate, false, or misleading, and the Credit Reporting Agencies (CRAs) are required to investigate a consumer’s disputed item(s), and further, the CRAs have 30 days to complete their investigation.
Unfortunately, 30 days may not be enough time for the CRAs to thoroughly complete their investigation, therefore, in this type of situation the CRAs may opt to ‘account suppress’ or to ‘temporarily delete’ your disputed item(s) after 30 days in order to remain compliant and to not violate the FCRA Rules.
Credit Reporting Agencies are very large warehouses of information and though they may have technology to help them sort through hundreds of thousands of files, it still requires Humans to complete a credit dispute investigation, not to mention, to allow time for a creditor to respond to a dispute and also to provide the CRA with proof and/or validation of a disputed account.
Now, if the CRA requires more than 30 days to complete an investigation, and if the CRA decides to suppress or to temporarily delete a disputed account, the disputed account in question will not appear on the consumer’s credit report after 30 days, however, this does not stop the credit dispute investigation.
If after 30 days the investigation is completed, and if the creditor provides proof to the CRA that the disputed credit account is valid, then the disputed credit account will again reappear on your credit report and the CRA should forward the results of the investigation to you, including any documents provided by the creditor to verify the validity of the disputed credit account.
At this point, it is the consumer’s right to further dispute the credit account if they do not agree with the results of the investigation by submitting another dispute letter clarifying why they do not agree with the results and include any documents to support their position.
In some instances, you may receive a response from the CRA, after the completion of the credit investigation, that explains that the creditor was not able to furnish verifiable proof of the disputed credit account, therefore they will ‘permanently delete’ the account from your credit report, which is a successful and favorable result for your credit dispute.
It is extremely important to keep such a letter in your files, and in a safe place, because sometimes a creditor will report files ‘in-bulk’ and if a Human did not do their job, and overlooked deleting your disputed account from their internal and active records, then your deleted disputed account may be reported again to your credit report.
If such an incident takes place then it is a matter of sending a copy of the ‘permanent deletion letter’ to the CRA and request that they immediately delete the disputed credit item from your credit report.
Though it is possible, and also permitted, for you to dispute credit accounts online, we DO NOT recommend this activity.
We recommend that you submit your written dispute letter by Certified U.S. Postal Mail so that you can have a ‘signature’ that confirms your Letter Of Dispute has been received by the CRA, or the creditor, or both.
From this point, continue to monitor your credit report, and if the disputed credit item continues to reappear on your credit report, then you may want to consider hiring a credit attorney who is familiar with FCRA Law to sue the Credit Reporting Agency and also the reporting creditor.
