What is the role of a credit report attorney?
Credit repair agencies VS. Legal counsel
Credit report attorneys do not engage in “credit repair.” We specifically caution against a consumer engaging a credit repair company that makes false promises of their ability to remove items of credit for an upfront fee. Consumers would be much better served and save money by initiating their own credit disputes. Many credit repair companies charge a monthly fee and for that they only produce form and /or spam letters to the credit reporting agencies that are not likely to solve the inaccurate credit report problem and often times make it harder to correct later. The credit reporting agencies look for signs of a credit repair clinic letter and then mark the consumer’s file with a Credit Repair Clinic notation so that it is nearly impossible to get anything corrected. A credit report attorney can explain the process to you and give you guidance on how to dispute inaccurate credit report data directly to the credit reporting agencies yourself.
Blankingship & Christiano helps consumers dispute and correct objectively inaccurate information on their credit reports. In the event that the credit reporting agencies do not delete, remove or correct inaccurate credit file data, you will need a credit report attorney to file a civil suit on your behalf and make them do it. In addition to forcing these credit reporting agencies to correct inaccurate information, we also sue them for the damages that they have caused as well as punitive damages to send a message that such behavior will not be tolerated.
Is your credit report inaccurate?
The first step in determining whether to hire a credit report attorney is understanding whether or not you have an objectively inaccurate credit report. The best example of this is an account that you did not open due to identity theft or confusion with some other consumer. Some consumers have late payments on their credit files that are inaccurate or misleading because they can prove that the payment was made on time and the creditor failed to post it correctly. There are often many inaccurate reports that cause consumers coming out of bankruptcy to have inaccuracies that they need to correct. These demonstrably inaccurate errors on credit reports can come in all sorts of ways and the critical issue is can you prove that what the agencies are reporting is inaccurate or misleading? Do you have documents that will support your position? If you do, then you should hire a credit report attorney.
Consumers should dispute inaccurate credit reports themselves by mailing a clearly written credit dispute letter that describes the nature of the credit reporting inaccuracy. Consumers must dispute the inaccurate items individually with each credit reporting agency that is reporting the information. Please see our previous blog post on this topic. You should remember to keep a copy of the dispute letter that you issue to Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion disputing the inaccurate information as well as the information that is received in response to the dispute. Assuming that the dispute letter did not work, and the Agencies declined to correct it, a credit report lawyer can help you take the next steps, get the inaccurate data corrected and sue the Agencies and furnishers that refused to correct it for damages. Credit repair clinics, on the other hand, will tell you to keep banging your head against the wall and submit more and more disputes that the agencies will just ignore because they have already marked the file “Credit Repair Clinic.” If you have a legitimate dispute and can prove that your file data is inaccurate, you need a credit report lawyer.
If you have an error on your credit report and need legal help getting it corrected contact the Virginia Credit report error lawyers at Blankingship & Christiano, P.C. (571) 207-8331 or fill out our contact form to discuss your case.
