What is a Dispute? How Does it Impact My Credit Score? – Episode #15

What is a dispute? You may know the one you’ve done, where you call your card issuer and dispute a charge that you are sure isn’t yours. That is one kind of dispute. The one we want to talk about is a credit report dispute. First, what is it? It’s a formal request to dispute a line item in your credit report and the credit bureaus have just 30 days to respond. You should do a credit dispute if you have something in your credit report you know is incorrect. I know of one person who got a Score Watch alert telling him his score had increased by 183 points, all from the removal of one erroneous account.

Don’t waste time disputing accurate information. This is a waste of time, and frankly, just wrong. Even if you get an item removed — it might be temporary — once the credit bureau realizes the information is correct. Also, don’t dispute non-score impacting items like your birthday. That’s not going to help your credit score at all.

So how do you do a credit dispute? Try our sample dispute letter. This will make the process very easy for you.