18 honest playbooks
Dispute strategy by credit-report item
Collections, charge-offs, medical bills, repossessions, bankruptcies, inquiries, identity theft — each has a different honest playbook. Find yours, see what actually works, and get the exact letter sequence.
Restore is honest about what disputes can and can’t do. Each strategy below tells you the reality first — including when an item is accurate and can’t be disputed away — then gives you the right letters in the right order.
Late payment
A single accurate late payment is hard to remove by dispute. Your best real tool is a goodwill request to the original creditor (especially if the res…
Collection account
Collections respond to a specific sequence. First force the collector to PROVE the debt (debt validation). If they cannot validate, dispute it as unve…
Medical collection
Medical collections have extra protections. The nationwide bureaus no longer report PAID medical collections, no longer report UNPAID medical under $5…
Charge-off
A charge-off is the original creditor writing the debt off — it can still report for 7 years from the original delinquency. Attack accuracy: the balan…
Repossession
Repos are reported by the lender, so go after accuracy and documentation. Common errors: wrong balance/deficiency, wrong dates, a voluntary surrender …
Foreclosure
A foreclosure reports for 7 years from the filing/first delinquency. As a public-record-adjacent mortgage item, attack accuracy: dates, balance, wheth…
Bankruptcy notation
The big myth: you "dispute the bankruptcy with the court." The courts do NOT report to the bureaus — the bureaus buy public-record data from vendors. …
Civil judgment
Good news: since 2017–2018 the bureaus stopped reporting civil judgments that do not meet strict matching standards (name + address + SSN/DOB). Most j…
Tax lien
Like judgments, tax liens were purged from consumer reports in 2017–2018 and generally should not appear at all. A lingering tax lien is almost always…
Student loan
Student loans are reported by the servicer. The most common fixable errors: a late reported during an approved deferment/forbearance, a CARES-Act/pand…
Hard inquiry
Honest expectations: hard inquiries are small (a few points) and fall off automatically after 2 years, and the bureaus usually call them "factual" and…
Identity-theft account
This has the strongest legal tool of all: an FTC Identity Theft Report (file at IdentityTheft.gov) lets you BLOCK the fraudulent account under FCRA § …
Duplicate tradeline
The same debt is reported twice (often the original creditor AND a collector, or two collectors). One of them must show $0/transferred. This is a clea…
Account status error
The current "pay status" and open/closed flag drive a lot of your score. Common errors: paid but still "charge-off," closed by you but shows "closed b…
Authorized-user account
You are only an authorized user, not the liable borrower — so a negative AU tradeline can simply be removed on request. You are not disputing the debt…
Mixed file (not yours)
Someone else's accounts are mixed into your file — usually a similar name, a relative (Jr./Sr.), or a transposed SSN. Fix the IDENTIFIERS first (the b…
Personal info (address/phone/name/DOB/SSN)
Bad identifiers are not just cosmetic — wrong addresses and SSN fragments are what let other people's accounts merge into your file. Clean these up ea…
ChexSystems / banking item
ChexSystems is a specialty bureau banks use to approve checking accounts. It is covered by the FCRA just like the big three. Get your free ChexSystems…
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Start Free →Restore Credit is software that helps you exercise your rights under the FCRA (15 U.S.C. §1681 et seq.) and FDCPA (15 U.S.C. §1692 et seq.). It is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice, and no outcome — including item removal or score improvement — is guaranteed. Only dispute information you have a good-faith basis to believe is inaccurate, incomplete, outdated, or unverifiable; submitting false information to a credit bureau can be unlawful. For advice about your specific situation, consult a licensed attorney.