Hi all. Firstly, I'd like to thank all the folks who contribute here with providing great info and answering questions. I first joined when I was buying my first home and this site helped me through the process big time. That was in 2015, since then I haven't really posted much, but I still lurk here quite often. A lot has happened, I got married to the love of my life, and just found out we are expecting our first child! And with this we have decided it's time to buy a new home, which leads into the reason for this post.
When it comes to monitoring and optimizing my credit profile I'm definitely not as dedicated as many here. I keep an eye on the scores that I get through my CC's, and run through my reports on CK every few months just to make sure there's no major issues. But now that we will be going for another mortgage I decided to do a deeper dive into my file and make sure everything was good to go. That's when I discovered my Citi CC had the remarks of "Dispute Resolved, Consumer Disagrees" and "Customer Disputes After Resolution".
I had a pretty good idea of where this had come from. A few months back I did have to dispute several charges, someone got ahold of the number and had made several orders from Amazon. I took the usual action, immediately contacted Citi, they refunded the charges, issued a new card, and did a fraud investigation. Upon completion of the investigation they found in my favor, that the charges were indeed fraudulent and I was not responsible. Of course I agreed with the outcome, so why now the remarks saying otherwise?
First thing I did was come here and do a search about the remarks, and did find a few threads with varying information. Some said it was nothing to worry about, others said you wouldn't be able to get a mortgage with those remarks on a tradeline. The recommended methods for getting them removed were also split, about half saying to contact CC company, others saying to go directly to CRAs. Not wanting to take any chances with getting a mortgage I figured I best follow through and try to get them removed.
I called Citi's main CC line first to see how far I could get there. They were able to see the remarks on my file, and confirmed that they did result from the fraud dispute I had put in. But they could not tell me why they had been put on my file. They agreed the fraud disputes had been found in my favor, and there was no disagreement or additional disputes from me after that. They said they could not remove the remarks, and I would have to contact the Citi Credit Bureau Dispute Department, either through fax or mail. I wrote up a brief overview of the situation and why I thought the remarks were innacurate, and sent it to the fax number they provided me (866-713-5028).
Today (about 2-3 weeks later) I received a letter from Citi. They agreed the remarks were not accurate, said my file was updated to remove the remarks and it will update with the CRAs as well. I just checked my reports and sure enough the remarks have already been removed. I was very pleased with this result, and being able to do it direct through Citi. I was concerned if I went through CRAs I might have to enter a formal dispute of the information (which I understand is also no good when trying to get a mortgage).
Anyway, just wanted to share and hopefully this may be of some help to someone else down the road.
