How to Get Charge Offs Off Credit Reports

When credit card debt goes unpaid for 180 days, the balance will be "charged off" by the credit card company. Charging off the debt allows the credit card company to claim the unpaid debt as a tax loss. A charge-off is very damaging to your credit report because it signals to future lenders that you cannot be trusted to pay your bills on time. Because a charge-off does not occur until your payments are six months behind, you will also suffer six late payment notations on your credit file. This significantly lowers your credit score since your debt payment history accounts for 35 percent of your overall credit score (See References 1). There are, however, legal actions that you can take to have a charge off---and the negative payment history---removed from your credit report.

Instructions

1

Contact the credit bureaus Experian, Equifax and TransUnion to request copies of your official credit reports. You must obtain your credit reports directly from all three of these credit bureaus because otherwise, you will have no way of knowing which credit bureau is reporting negative information about your credit history.

2

Review the credit reports to see which credit bureaus are reporting a charge-off. Not every company reports to every credit bureau, and you are likely to discover that the charge-off does not appear on all three credit reports.

3

Check the date that the account was charged off. If it occurred two years ago or more, the credit card company may have purged its records of your account since credit card companies typically do not maintain consumer records for extended periods of time. If the company cannot provide accurate records to the credit bureaus, your dispute has a higher chance of being successful.

4

Write a dispute letter to each of the credit bureaus that is currently reporting the charge-off. Ask that the credit bureaus conduct an investigation into the account. Include a copy of your credit report and highlight the charge-off that you wish to have investigated. The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires that a credit bureau investigate every consumer dispute that it receives (See References 2).

5

Wait 30 days for a response from the credit bureaus. During that time, the credit bureaus will contact the credit card company to verify the charge-off. If no records of the charge-off remain, or if the company does not bother to respond, the information will be removed from your credit file. You will then receive an updated copy of your credit report, along with a letter explaining the results of the investigation.