Equifax Credit Bureau Dispute Mailing Address
PO Box 105518
Atlanta, GA 30348
Disputing by U.S. MAIL is BEST since it creates a trackable paper trail.
Equifax Online Dispute
www.investigate.equifax.com
**You must have a recent copy of your Equifax Credit Report to dispute online.
Step 1- Get a copy of your Equifax Credit Report and look for errors or negative information of a questionable nature. (Items that will ruin good credit include: charge offs, judgments, bankruptcy, included in bankruptcy, foreclosure, repossessions, wage garnishment, 30, 60, 90, or 120 day late payments, collections, paid collections, settled accounts, public record)
Step 2 - Draft and mail an Equifax dispute letter - this is a free wizard that will create your letter for you.
How to Screw Up a Credit Dispute
Here are just a few ways you can botch a credit dispute: File a frivolous dispute, disputing too many items, challenging an item for the wrong reason, disputing too often.
Make some of these mistakes and you will discover that repairing bad credit is severely delayed (if not impossible).
Even worse, the credit bureaus may hit you with a “Red Flag” and refuse to investigate future disputes.
There are three possible outcomes of an Equifax Dispute
- Deleted - Equifax may delete an item because they found it to be an error or the creditor failed to verify the information. This is the best result if you are repairing negative items like charge offs, collections, etc.
- Updated - Often the original creditor will provide new information to Equifax such as a new balance or date of last activity.
- Remains - this is the worst possible outcome because the disputed item will remain on your credit report. Your next step may be debt validation or a creditor direct intervention.
(You may consider consulting a credit repair attorney to help delete questionable stubborn items by way of debt validation, escalated information requests, or goodwill interventions).
What a successful Equifax dispute looks like -
(submitted by a client of The Lexington Law Firm)
“I just want to share with you my story about how my credit situation. If you are someone struggling with bad credit, then I was walking in your exact same shoes…
And today – if you look behind me – this is the house that I bought.
So, obviously my credit situation has changed.
Basically, while I was in college I ran up my credit cards and acquired a lot of unmanageable debt which destroyed my credit rating.
About a-year-and-a-half ago when I went to try to buy a house, the banks laughed at me and made me feel bad about what happened in college. (They basically implied that I was adeadbeat SCUMBAG even though it really wasn’t all my fault).
I knew that I had to fix my credit, but didn’t know how to do it myself so I went to Lexington Law.
Now, literally within several months, I was able to purchase a $300,000 new home without any trouble at all obtaining a mortgage.
So instead of going into banks with bad credit and being looked at as a scumbag, the banks were more than willing to help.
In fact, when I applied for my mortgage and the banker ran my credit, he came back and was saying…
“Wow! Sure thing sir. We’d love to help you out.”
Lexington Law literally changed my life.
I went from being the person who has bad credit to being the person who is living in what I consider my dream home at age 29.
Some examples of the things that were on my report that are now gone were: all sorts of charge offs, collections, and I even had credit report judgments listed against me (which I heard is one of the worst things you can have on your credit.)
I had basically every kind of negative listing shy of a bankruptcy.
Lexington Law has raised my credit score at least 237 points.
I just checked my FICO score which is now a 737. When I started with Lexington Law, it was below 500!”
I encourage anyone struggling with bad credit to pick up the phone and give Lexington Law a call.
It was super-encouraging to see my credit score improve each month as the negative items were deleted from my credit reports. I thought some of the bad credit was permanent since creditors misled me into believing that delinquent information would stay on my credit report for the next seven years.
However, through their dispute process and “goodwill interventions,” Lexington Law provedit is possible to remove any questionable negative item. (it is the same as pleading ‘not guilty’ in a court of law).
Additionally, the paralegal assigned to my case showed me other credit rebuilding techniques such as:
- How to add up to three years of positive payment history to your credit with your regular phone or utility bills (these are things I pay each month anyway so it was a real “no-brainer)
- How boost your credit score by optimizing your ‘Utilization Ratio’ - this involves transferring balances and there is a Right Way and Wrong Way to do this
- How Lexington Law can erase your damaging credit inquiries (applying for credit puts a small “ding” on your credit. Inquiry Investigation helps you remove these “dings”)
Deleting the negative credit items like charge offs and the credit card judgment, combined with the credit rebuilding techniques, rapidly improved my credit score. In fact, in month two my score went up 74 points!
After living with bad credit for so long, it was really encouraging to see that I was making progress in the right direction.
Not only did the attorneys at Lexington Law show me results, they also provided excellent customer service along the way. If you are someone who enjoys that “personal touch”, then you may like how Lexington Law assigns a paralegal to your case.
My paralegal (Stephanie) was always available to discuss the status of my case over the phone and email. Even though I didn’t expect or ask for it, my attorney would also periodically give me a call to check in.
Here are some strategies Lexington Law used to delete the really stubborn bad credit – such as the credit card judgment:
- Unlimited dispute & delete
- Goodwill interventions
- Escalated information requests
- Debt validation
- Inquiry assist
You can also access you case online anytime you like. (I enjoyed logging in just to see all the deletions!)
If you are struggling with a bad credit score because of negative credit items, then I truly hope that you start repairing your credit today. I know how humiliating bad credit isand I know how easy it is just to ‘sweep it under the rug’ and pretend it will go away on its own.
I realize that your situation is probably a little different than mine, however, Lexington Law has already deleted questionable charge offs, a credit card judgment, late payments, collection items, and inquiries from my credit report and raised my credit score to a 737!
Here is a shot of my credit score online last month -:
www.LexingtonLaw.com
