Your creditor will mark your debt as a charge off if you have been unable to keep up with your regular payments for quite some time. This account will then be reflected on your credit report for all your future creditors and lenders to see and scrutinize on. Since it is a derogatory report, it will most definitely be a factor for your loan and credit application to be declined or to at least get one that has reasonable terms. You can actually employ a number of ways to get it removed. One of the best and most popular ways is through a dispute letter. If you have legal grounds to do so, you would not have to wait for 7 years for it to be removed from your credit report.
To get started, the first thing that you need to do is to get individual copies of your credit reports from the three credit bureaus Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Consumers are entitled to acquire a copy of their credit report from the three bureaus once every year. You can conveniently order them through the website AnnualCreditReport.com, as advised by the Federal Trade Commission.
Thoroughly review the charge off entry in your credit report for and look for any discrepancies in the listed information. Check each of the credit reports from the different bureaus as they might contain inaccuracies that are different from each other. Ensure that you find at least one error so that you can legally file a dispute.
In order to make your claim valid, you need to have some sort of written evidence that will prove that there is a legal dispute at hand. Go through your financial records and documents and look for proof that will prove the errors of the charge off that was reflected on your credit report. Keep in mind that a charge off will be reported by your credit when you have not paid your debt obligations for 180 days.
Now that you have the errors to dispute and the written evidences to prove it, you may now start writing your letter to the credit bureaus. Properly and entirely explain the account that you are disputing and state your reasons why it should be removed. For as long as you letter has shown no intentions of pulling a joke, this will be attended by the credit bureaus.
Check into the websites of the credit bureaus to find the addresses where you will send your dispute letter to. Wait for a response from them in about 45 days. Credit bureaus are given 30 days to look through your claim and do the necessary investigation to deem it a valid or invalid record on your credit report. If it is invalid, they should send you with a copy of your updated report with the disputed charge off account already removed.
It is good to know that there is a big chance that a charge off will be removed from your credit report even when it only has a minor mistake, especially if it is an old account. Lenders would most likely ignore inquiries from credit bureaus instead of going through numerous records to verify an old account. Credit bureaus would automatically remove the charge off from your credit report if the credit will not respond in the given amount of time.