Your TransUnion credit score affects your ability to obtain credit. This score represents your ability to pay back your creditors and your credit history. For instance, when you are late paying your payments on a credit card, this credit score drops.
Your best option for improving your TransUnion credit score is to review your TransUnion credit report. During this review, establish which debts belong to you. Establish which debts are older than seven years and are not included in a bankruptcy. Establish whether any of your debts possesses incorrect information. Once you have gathered all of the required information, create reports for each of these debts. TransUnion investigates all debts for which you create a discrepancy report. Once the credit reporting agency establishes that these debts do not belong to you, are too old to list, and/or contain incorrect information, the listing is updated.
Evaluate all debts that are negatively affecting your TransUnion credit score. Collection accounts, as well as, the original debt affect your TransUnion credit score. All debts for which you have multiple late payments also lower your TransUnion credit score. Create a list of these debts with contact information for each creditor.
Consult your budget and determine the amount of money you have available to payoff collection accounts. Establish the amount of money you could pay extra on debts that are behind. Use this amount to establish a budget for paying off these debts.
Contact the collection agencies directly to establish whether a settlement is available. Collection agencies often increase the amount of the debt to generate a high payoff. These agencies do this to cover the cost of buying your account from the credit. Their job, however, is to collect as much of a profit as possible. Luckily for you, it is possible to negotiate a smaller settlement. The reason for this is that, they have a limited amount of time to collect payment for each debt. Whenever a collection agency is unsuccessful in collecting a debt, they sell that debt to another collection agency to secure their own profits. Keep that in mind when dealing with these agencies and negotiate the best possible settlement for each debt. Do not exceed your budget, as this will only create more financial problems down the road.
As you pay off these debts, write a formal letter to each collection agency or creditor requesting a removal of the credit listing from your credit report. Always print out additional copies of these letters and send each letter through certified mail. Place the copies and the returned certified mail receipts in a file and store it in a safe location. With these items, you have proof that you sent the letter to the creditor and/or collection agency. Send a letter to both the collection agency and the original creditor when a debt in collections is paid off. It is important to send the additional letter, as some collection agencies do not notify the original creditor of the payoff. This is especially true of accounts that have been sold to multiple collection agencies.
Notify TransUnion of any accounts that appear on your TransUnion credit report, after a divorce. Medical and credit card bills are the most often incorrectly listed debts following a divorce. Often a former spouse will not update information listed within a hospital record system or with a credit card company, in hopes that the creditor will bill the other spouse for these charges. It is important for you to notify TransUnion at any time you locate a listing that does not belong to you, but instead belongs to a former spouse. Your best option is to create the required report and attach a note to report that you are mailing a copy of your divorce decree to TransUnion. This action protects your credit history from fraudulent listings and improves your TransUnion credit score once the debt is removed.
In the event, that your TransUnion reports do not result in a removal of a debt that is not yours, contact the creditor directly to gather information. Identity thieves, although criminal, are clever and gather the correct information pertaining to their victims in order to fool creditors and credit reporting agencies. Gather information from the creditor and request that he or she file an investigation report. Then contact your local law enforcement and file a report. Once the creditor and law enforcement prove that you are the victim of identity theft, the credit listing is removed from your TransUnion credit.
Once all discrepancies and incorrect listings are removed from your credit report, your TransUnion credit score increases. The same is true of payoffs for all collection accounts and late payment accounts. As you continue to pay your debts on time, and pay them off your TransUnion credit score continues to increase.
