Disputes and score - what's the real answer?

[AshCas]

I'm a little confused, and I'm hoping someone can clarify something for me. I've read in these forums that disputing an account will completely take it out of scoring, but I've also read that only certain portions of the account are taken out (I.e. balance), and the tupe of account (collection) is still factored in. If I dispute a collection account, where the balance is not reporting into my utilization, is the account taken out of scoring all together? Or does FICO still read it as a collection on my report? Thanks!

[ztnjpv]

I have disputed many accounts and they always factored into my scoring. If there are unusual cases where the opposite might be true, I am not aware.

[llecs]

For OC accounts only, a dispute will lead FICO to ignore the balance, the CL, and the payment history. FICO will still include items like mix of credit, length of history, and will still factor it into your overall AAoA and scoring bucket.

For CA and PR TLs, FICO will fully score all aspects of the TL [during a dispute]. Per FICO scoring, FICO ignores these balances anyway. That's why paying a CA will never improve your FICO score.

[RobertEG]

+1

End result is that you get a score, but it is just a temp and semi-useless score.

Being that the presence of a pending dispute flag in a consumer's file has such importance, you would assume that the CRAs, in concluding any dispute filed through them, would include as a routine item in their checklist the reset of the dispute flag to "resolved". 

I have seen many posts on the site stating that dispute flags are not routinely reset by the CRAs.  THEY are the final party that concludes the reinvestigation and sends the final Notice to the consumer, so I see no excuse for their negligence.

In resolving this issue, I would not recomment filing a dispute.  That is a catch-22, filing a dispute to get a dispute status corrected, resulting in another dispute flag.

It is not an issue of inaccuracy of reporting by a furnisher, but rather the failure of the CRA to fulfill its administrative duties.  I would recommend filing a complaint with the CRA.