A study released by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group in June 2004 found that 79% of the consumer credit reports surveyed contained some kind of error or mistake. Even worse, more than 25% of credit reports have errors serious enough to result in the denial of credit or increase rates. Credit bureau's errors can cost you literally thousands of dollars.

You may even be more surprised to learn that credit bureaus are private companies whose sole purpose is to collect your information to sell it to pretty much anyone who will pay for it…including yourself. You are allowed one free report per year, but if you want to know your scores or want other reports, you must pay for that information.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act allows consumers to dispute any account that they believe may be inaccurate. The burden of proof is on the creditor and the credit bureaus to prove that the information is accurate. Many of times, they have tossed your records, they are incomplete or inaccurate. Once you send the credit bureaus a dispute letter, they have approximately 30 days to verify that all the information they are reporting is 100% accurate. If not, they must update it or remove the account from your report. If they no longer have your file, they can't update it, so they must remove it. That is how consumers remove negative credit ratings from their reports.

There are many other ways to do it, like sending debt validation letters to debt collectors or pay for delete letters to creditors, but your best shot and first try should be with a dispute letter. Many times credit bureaus don't even investigate accounts; they just check records on their e-Oscar system. Unfortunately, they don't care too much whether your reports are accurate or not. They don't spend much time reading your dispute, it is all automated. It's just not profitable, so you may want to keep disputing until they do. Just remember to wait for 30 days, even if you get the results back faster.

Learn how to remove negative credit from your credit reports at the credit repair forum! Don't have time? Let the professionals at Lexington Law Firm do the work for you!