That Negative Item is Accurate…Can it Still Be Removed?
We get this question all the time. What if I really did miss that payment? Can it still come off my report? The short answer is, yes. It can. It’s important that the information in your credit report is not just accurate, but also fair and verifiable. There are tons of examples of an item being accurate, but being removed from a report.
Credit Isn’t Standard
As convenient as it would be for the credit bureaus, the thing about credit is that it’s incredibly personal and nuanced. In America, about 224 million people have a credit file! It’s silly to think that there won’t be exceptions to the reporting rules when you’re dealing with that many people.
Life Happens
Imagine you are in the military, and while deployed you get a bill in the mail you weren’t expecting. Months go by and you come home to find the bill. You quickly pay it, but the damage is already done. The creditor has reported you to the bureau, or they’ve sold that debt to a creditor, or worse, both. Sure, you were 30, 60, maybe 90 days late on a bill, and yeah, maybe the fact is that you had an account go to collections, but is that a fair representation of you as a borrower? Absolutely not. Hatch can help in situations like this to work with the creditors and bureaus to challenge ‘accurate’ information to try to get it removed from your credit reports.
Hatch can help in situations like this to work with the creditors and bureaus to challenge ‘accurate’ information to try to get it removed from your credit reports.
What if you had a mortgage with your spouse and you decided to get a divorce. In the divorce your ex was assigned responsibility for the mortgage, but missed a payment while your name was still on the account. Is it fair that the missed payment shows up on your credit report? Even if your name was on the account and it was legitimately a missed payment? Of course not.
Just because an item is accurate doesn’t mean it belongs.
We’ve Seen it All
These are just two examples, but we’ve seen many others that warrant a negative item being removed from someone’s credit report despite the item being factually accurate. There are a lot of strategies to attack these types of items. Give us a chance to help you, don’t assume it’s hopeless.
The credit bureaus make millions of dollars by buying and selling your personal information. At Hatch we believe that they should be able to understand your situation and we plan to ask them the hard questions to make sure they’re portraying you in a fair manner. We don’t want to fit into the ecosystem the way it’s built, we want to shake it up on your behalf.