Tag Archives: transunion

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Can a Charged-Off Credit Card Help Your Credit Score?

A not-too-unusual scenario for those trying to repair their credit

This happened to me, and I know it has happened to several clients of mine as well. Here’s the scenario:

You have a credit card account that was charged off a couple of years ago. You assume (correctly) that it is hurting your credit scores. After sending a few rounds of dispute letters to the credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion–the “big 3”), you are unable to get it removed. During those months that you are working through the dispute letter process however, your credit scores see a big jump. What happened?

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Credit Bureaus Change the Way They Handle Disputes

Big news out of the New York Attorney General’s office. From CNN:

Experian (EXPGF), Equifax (EFX) and TransUnion, the three main agencies that track your credit, have agreed to follow new guidelines to handle disputes on your reports, according to a settlement announced Monday by the New York Attorney General.

This is huge news. Disputing information on credit reports is a big part of credit repair, and if you’ve ever gone through it, you know it can be frustrating to watch the credit bureaus acting in seemingly incomprehensible ways to simple requests like “this account isn’t mine; please delete it.”

It’s not clear at the moment how this will affect people in other states, if at all. The settlement could prompt action from other states’ attorneys general in a piecemeal fashion. The feds could even get involved in the form of the CFPB.