Time Limit on Disputes?

[tess_bk]

So I have a question - our BK was discharged in late 2003. We both went back to school for advanced degrees and worked our behinds off for the past several years (he has worked part time or full time jobs from the beginning, I held 3 part time jobs while completing my degree, plus we have a young child, and we now both work full time). We put the BK "behind us" -- but part of that was not dealing with our credit report. There is one account that appears on our credit report as a write off. It should have been IIB (we took it out for our business and all our other business-related cards were included). But apparently it wasn't - either it's not in the paperwork, and should have been, or it wasn't reported correctly by the creditor. Before I go through the emotional pain of digging out the paperwork to see if it really should say IIB for that card on the credit report, I'd like to know if there's some kind of time limit on disputing this sort of thing. It's been more than 6 years since we were discharged, but we want to buy a house and I'd really like to clean up our credit report.

[mom2three09]

It doesn't matter how long it's been. I would immediately send (mail) a dispute letter to the CRA's informing them that the debt was IIB. Even if it wasn't. I'm sure they likely won't have a problem marking it as IIB (and prob won't even verify it with the OC to make sure it was IIB).

[tess_bk]

Thanks

That didn't even occur to me. It's interesting but on my TransUnion report, none of the accounts that were IIB (nor the one that should have been) are even listed. I find that strange but I wonder if because we filed in 2003 and it's now 2010, some of the creditors have already dropped the account. Anyway I appreciate the advice and I will get on it as soon as I can.

[liz417]

I have a BofA account that was a "charge-off/bad credit" on my credit reports. When I disputed it to have it changed to "IIB", I was told that it would remain on my record because the charge off was before I filed for BK.

[justbroke]

Since it is almost 7 years, the item probably just dropped off some credit reports. I do know that some of the agencies take things off at 6 years and 6 months.

[tess_bk]

That's good news

"some of the agencies take things off at 6 years and 6 months"

That could be an explanation for my TransUnion report being missing on the IIB accounts and the one charge-off.

Another couple of items will probably hurt my score (which is 670 now, not that terrible but not great); they are small medical bills that I just forgot to pay in the midst of grad school frenzy. The total is less then $200, but they did go to a collection agency. I paid them to the collection agency. That was almost 4 years ago but from what I understand will stay on my report for another 3 years at least.