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| 11 things you never knew about your
credit report |
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10. Bad news comes off in seven
years.
Some of it does.
Chapter 13 (reorganization of debt) disappears seven years from the filing date.
But if you filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy (exoneration of all debt), the window is
10 years from the filing date.
On the good news side, accounts in bankruptcy can be deleted seven
years after the date of your first missed payment, so those individual pieces
may disappear before the word "bankruptcy" on your report. And if you
pay off or close an account that had no delinquencies or problems, it, too, remains
on the record for 10 years rather than the previous seven, say Experian experts.
Again, this means positive information hangs around longer, as a consumer benefit.
11. I can always pay someone to fix or repair
my credit.
Yes, you can clear up erroneous information posted
to your account, such as a repossessed car that you didn't purchase
in the first place, but if you paid your Sears bill three months
late in 1997, that's a hard fact.
Companies claiming to fix your credit deliver on their
promises by generating a flood of dispute letters to the credit
reporting agencies, which in turn asks the creditor to verify or
document the entry. If they cannot, the listing must come off at
that time. But if the creditor later does verify or document it,
the agency slaps it right back into the file after 30 days.
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