Improve Your Credit Score
February 23rd, 2010 admin
Attached are the notes from a Free Credit Seminar conducted by Eric Rollings CEO of RapidCreditRestore.com.
Thank you for your interest in the workshop. These are basic instructions for the letter templates I provided.
PRELIMINARY STEP: Go to www.truecredit.com, www.mycreditkeeper.com or a similar site and pull your credit. You can get a score, but it is not the same as what a mortgage broker or auto dealer would pull. It will help you measure your success. Make copies of your latest credit reports. Keep a set of “clean” originals.
STEP TWO: As for the copies, you’re going to assess each item on your report and assign it an appropriate credit repair intervention. First, comb through your reports and look for those trade lines (credit industry jargon meaning “an item on your report”) where you were never more than 30, 60, 90, or 120 days late. Now, you’re going to write the word “GOODWILL” next to each of those trade lines.
STEP THREE: Next look for items that have entered collection or charge-off
status. By the way, Equifax includes their handy “R9″ or “I9″ designations, which
will help make short work of this task with that bureau’s reports. If the trade line
was placed there by a third-party debt collector (in other words by “XYZ
Collection Company” as opposed to “MBNA”), then mark those trade lines with
the phrase “VALIDATION.” If the charge off was put there by an original creditor,
mark it “OC VALIDATION.”STEP FOUR: This step requires you to work through your reports and locate
any MEDICAL trade lines. If the item was placed there by a doctor, a hospital, a
testing lab, or someone collecting money for any of those, mark this one with the
acronym “HIPAA.” a trade line may have more than one notation.
I have included a HIPAA letter template. This should only be used with PAID medical collections. If the collection has not been paid, send a “debt validation letter”.STEP FIVE: Anything left is probably there as the result of some legal action — a
lien, a bankruptcy notation, a judgment, etc. Go back and mark those
COURTHOUSE.” These will many times be removed when requesting an investigation through the credit reporting agencies.Now you have the rough outlines of a plan… with plenty of flexibility. Each notation reflects a particular credit repair procedure. Your “GOODWILL”
trade lines are due a Goodwill Letter. This is where you need to do your
homework. There are addresses for each of you lenders on your reports. For this intervention, you want to Google four or five addresses for each lender that you are sending a “GOODWILL” letter to. While a single intervention doesn’t work all of the time, you should see some success with your initial set of letters.
For the lenders that don’t co-operate, don’t get discouraged! Continue this process every 30 -60 days until you succeed. This is a game of persistence.Next, those trade lines marked “VALIDATION” should receive a formal request for validation pursuant to the FDCPA. The template is marked “debt validation template”.
Never misrepresent your situation when sending letters to anyone for any purpose. Now… on to HIPAA This requires more homework. (Sorry, but there’s no way around it.) In a nutshell, no medical provider wants to entertain the possibility that their credit bureau report has violated your federal privacy rights. Basically, if an account has been paid, the medical provider cannot share your information with anyone that is not involved with your medical care. Reporting to a credit-reporting agency has been deemed a collection tactic by our government. If there is not a balance and it’s being reported, the provider is in violation of the privacy act. This is why only PAID medical receive a HIPAA letter.
Finally, every single item on a credit report merits FCRA verification by requesting an investigation from all three credit bureaus. That means that essentially every item on your reports will be matched with at least two interventions… one sent to the bureaus… and one sent to whoever placed the item on the reports.
This letter is the first letter you will send. It is called the “initial dispute template”. You are going to list every negative item EXCEPT items receiving a goodwill letter. These disputes will be sent to the credit reporting agencies (CRAs). These should be mailed using standard mail (44-cent stamp). With initial disputes, always include a copy of your license, social security card, and a utility bill bearing your name and current address. If your license does not have your current address on it, don’t send it. Send and additional utility bill, insurance statement, or bank statement instead. Without sending the proper documentation, you will waste 30 -60 days in the process.
In less than 45 days, you should receive your results indicating that the items disputed were deleted, verified, or new information. If an item has been deleted, check it off your copy of your reports. If it has been verified, send the appropriate letter we previously discussed. If it has been marked “new information”, review the changes and send the appropriate letter.
This is an outline of the initial process. You should have good results with this information. Feel free to ask for help when needed. It is important to keep very detailed notes. Making a checklist is a great way to stay on top of things. I will share many strategies, which will get you off to a good start.
I have also included some highlights of the FCRA so you will feel more comfortable with the process. You can Google a pdf of FCRA in its entirety.
-Eric Rollings CEO RapidCreditRestore.com
Links to forms:
- Debt Validation Template
- FCRA Highlights
- Goodwill Letter Template
- Hippa Letter
- Initial Dispute Template
- Pay for Deletion Template
- Verification Letter Template
Free Credit Seminar Heaven View Notes
