Ways to Clear Your Credit Report Completely

When you make a goal to straighten out your poor credit history, you might feel the need to do something to clear it immediately, but this will be a long journey. Federal law allows the credit reporting agencies to leave negative items on your report for possibly more than a decade. In some situations you can clear a report in a matter of hours.

Waiting

Wait long enough and you can clear your report without any effort. Most negative items, such as missed payments and collection accounts, have a seven-year reporting limit. Chapter 7 bankruptcy stays for 10 years, and Chapter 13 bankruptcy stays between seven and 10 years depending on when you finish your repayment plan. Unpaid tax liens can stay indefinitely, but some of the credit bureaus only report them for 15 years, according to Smart Credit.

Disputes and Rapid Rescoring

The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives all consumers the right to correct mistakes on their credit files. This is done by disputing the inaccurate negative item with the credit bureaus. You can clear reports even faster with a rapid re-scoring service. The normal dispute process takes up to a month--not including the time the agencies need to update their databases, which might be another month or two. Rapid re-scoring companies have a special connection to the bureaus that allows them to expedite the dispute process. However, they can only update reports when the creditor admits to an error or you have evidence to back up your claim.

Warning

Do not fall prey to claims of credit repair clinics that you can start a new credit profile and ignore your old one. It is a felony to fool creditors by using some of the tactics suggested by a credit repair company, such as applying for a tax ID number and putting that in place of a Social Security number on a credit application.

Tip

The next best thing to disputing errors on your credit report is rebuilding a credit history. Knocking off debt and paying accounts on time will add positive payment history to boost your credit score, while the negative items slowly diminish in importance. You might want to add a new account to your credit history if you only have reports with a negative item in the past. Not using credit fails to build any history.