A low credit score and negative items on your credit report may prevent you from getting a loan or finding employment. It is therefore worth while to put effort into becoming credit worthy if you are not currently, but you have to realize that it does not happen overnight. Credit repair is something that takes place over a couple of months and there are various steps involved if you want to increase your credit score.
The first step is to get to know exactly what the state of your current credit rating is. There are three credit bureaus and your rating might be slightly different at the three bureaus, since creditors only report to the one (or two) that they are subscribed to. You therefore need to get your credit report from all three credit bureaus.
If you have been denied credit or employment due to your credit record you are entitled to a free report. Ask the company who denied you credit (or employment) to provide you with the contact details of the specific bureau that they used. There is also legislation in place to entitle you to one free credit report from all the credit bureaus, per year.
Since the information on your credit report is never really verified, it is your responsibility to ensure that the information is correct. Be on the lookout for factual errors such as date errors, inaccurate histories of your accounts or typing errors. After going through the report, make a list of all the errors you would like to dispute. Please do not dispute errors that are ‘frivolous’ since these might just be rejected by the bureau and they might then ignore subsequent disputes from you.
You can either submit your disputes in the argument form supplied with your credit report or write a letter. Do not forget to include copies of supporting documents with your dispute. Do not send the original documents in with your dispute! Also keep records of the dates that you have sent in the disputes, as well as copies of all your dispute letters.
Any item that is proven to be inaccurate will be removed and will result in raising your credit score.
Apart from that, you also need to prove that you are able to repay loans in future and build up a good record on your credit reports. In order to do this, you need to ensure that you repay any loans or credit cards repayment amounts promptly. You might find that you have to periodically check your credit record to ensure that your good credit behavior is added to your credit record.
Slowly you will build up a positive credit history and start getting a good credit score that will make it easy to get a new loan with a reduced interested rate.