How Do I Clean Up My Credit Report History?

Reader Question: How do I clean up my credit report history?

That depends on what you mean by cleaning up your history. If you're referring to erroneous information that should not be on your credit report, then you should dispute those errors through the reporting agency that sent you that particular report.

Here are some of the most common errors that people clean up / dispute:

• Credit accounts showing up on your report(s) that are clearly not yours. This is often the result of an identity mix-up.
• Negative information that should have been purged already but remains on the credit report. By law, negative items can only stay on your credit report for 7 - 10 years, depending on what they are.
• Duplicate entries, as when the same exact item is reported twice.

All of these things can be disputed through the reporting company's website, and doing so will help you clean up your credit report history.

For example, if you order all three of your reports and find that the one from TransUnion has a mistake on it, you would go to their website (TransUnion.com) and look for the "disputes" link. Then you would click that link and follow the instructions for disputing the error. It's the same process for the other two companies as well -- Experian and Equifax.

However, if you are talking about negative but accurate information on your credit report, there's not much you can do to clean these items up.

For example, if you had some kind of account sent to collection in the past, and it accurately shows up on your credit report ... then there's really nothing you can do. The negative item can stay there until it exceeds the time limit set by the federal government (see Fair Credit Reporting Act), at which time the item must be removed.

Here's a similar Q&A session you should read. This person used the word "clear" instead of clean, but they essentially asked the same question as yours: How do I clear up my credit history?

Hope that helps. Good luck, and happy holidays.