Scrub Your Credit

To scrub your credit is bank industry terminology meaning to analyze your credit report making a list of derogatory accounts and in this case finding the street addresses for the companies reporting those accounts.

First, make a copy of your credit report because you need one copy you can write on and at least one that is clean for your records.

Take the one that you are going to write on and get yourself a pen with red ink. You are going to grade your credit report. Go through your report and find all the accounts that have negative information. Mark them somehow with the red ink so they are easy to find when you are flipping through your credit report later.

Now analyze every one of those accounts and find out what exactly they are saying. If the codes in the accounts are difficult to figure out and they likely will be at first, call the customer service number of the company that generated the report and ask them to explain it to you. This company is usually called a credit vendor. There are many carts on the gravy train of the credit industry and we are all paying for them.

Make a note of what is specifically derogatory in those accounts.

There are questions we need to ask about these entries

• Which credit bureaus are they reporting to?
• Are the accounts still open and you use them but they are reporting late payments?
• Are they charged off accounts that are more than 180 days old?
• Is it a debt that is more than seven years old?
• Are they a company you have done business with or are they a collection agency?
• Are they duplicate accounts of older charged off accounts that are also in your credit report?
• If so, do they report different dates of when the debt was active?
• Again is the original account more than seven years old?

It is very typical for a collection agency to purchase an old debt even one that is many years old and past the time it can legally be on your credit report (seven years), then report it as a brand new account that just went into default. This is against the laws but it is standard operating procedure for EVERY collection agency. Make a note of every derogatory account and what specifically makes them negative.

Now go through the rest of your credit report and look for any revolving credit accounts that are not reported negatively. Mark them with the red pen. Mark what they are reporting as your current balance and what they are reporting as your credit limit. If it is above the 50% balance to credit limit ratio it is damaging your credit without actually being a negative account.

In the very back of your report it should have a list of all the companies who have made an entry into your report with their addresses. Write those addresses in the red ink out to the side of where they reported. You are going to send them some letters.