Successful "dispute" remarks removal

[Anonymous]

Less than a week ago I faxed a letter to Equifax to remove "consumer disputes this account" remarks from previously investigated items that were updated from the investigation.

Today they were changed to the correct verbiage.

Process was quick and painless.

YMMV

[Anonymous]

nice i need to do the same !

[Anonymous]

Any score change for the remarks ?

[Anonymous]

No, the remarks don't affect your score. They can stop an approval for credit, though, if someone is looking at your reports. It indicates that the tradelines are in dispute, even if they are not.

[Anonymous]

Actually the comments can have an effect.

If the comments is just saying consumer disputes the account and it has no resolution attached they are generally withheld from your FICO score.  This is why lenders(particularly mortgage lenders) ask for those types of comments to be removed.  I recently am going through this...

I had 3 disputes removed from Equifax and my FICO8 score dropped about 20 points.  Same thing for Transunion as I lost about 18 points I believe.

[cphil2]

Yes, I'm furiously going through the same thing. If you can get by, do NOT ask for the dispute comments to be removed. Having comments removed has tanked my score by 60 points. These were old items previously in dispute, and it was resolved and currently not in dispute. If anyone is trying to get an FHA mortgage and the tradelines that contained dispute comments were below $2,000 than the comments can remain with no issue. If it's > $2,000, for FHA to be approved the comments need to be removed, OR it will have to go through a manual underwriting process and could still be denied.

[RobertEG]

It is important to clarify what you mean by "dispute remarks."

Once you file a dispute, the CRA must enter that fact into your file, with the designation remaining pending/undecided until they conclude the dispute.

They must conclude their reinvestigation within 30 days of filing of the dispute, and mail the Notice of Results of Reinvestigtion no later than 5 business days thereafter.

At that point, the dispute is concluded, and the status will be updated to reflect conclusion of the dispute, such as "Consumer disputes, meets FCRA requriments."

If the dispute is either not concluded by sending of a Notice of Results of Rinvestigation, or the pending dispute status is not updated to reflect that the dispute is concluded, the CRA is in violation of the FCRA.

However, the FCRA additionally permits a consumer, after conclusion of a dispute that is unfavorable, have remarks entered into their file that provide a statement of reasons why they disagree.  Those remarks must be included in subsequent credit reports, but do NOT represent a non-concluded dispute.

For various legal reasons, once a dispute is filed, record of its filing and dispostion must be retained in the consumer's credit file.  You dont remove record of a dispute.

However, the optional filing of remarks presenting reasons for disagreement with the outcome of a dispute can be deleted upon request to the CRA.

[Anonymous]

"Consumer disputes, meets FCRA requirements"

This is a remark that is sent by your creditor when you have disputed the account on their end - ie, an unauthorized charge.

These remarks in particular were regarding information that was incorrect and subsequently updated. The remarks that it was still in dispute and under investigation had persisted, and were affecting my mortgage process as it appeared I was currently disputing the validity of the accounts.