Can you please explain exactly what "falls off in 7 years" means in regards to my credit report?

Question

I opened a lot of Credit Cards and such when I was young and stupid and in college back around 200-2002. I've heard stuff falls off your credit report after 7 years. What exactly does that mean...7 years since it was paid off? What if one was never paid off completely? Does that still fall off? Is it 7 years since the account was opened? And does it really just fall off? What happens to it, where doe sit go? Those kind of things I'd like to know. My Score is in the low 500's and I'd like to start repairing my credit by disputing and removing some of these old things. Please help by explaining how all this works. Thanks!

Answer 1

The reporting period for credit card negatives begins the first time you became 30 days late and never brought the account current leading to the charge off.

If you made a payment after the account was charged off, it would not reage the reporting period and allow it to report for a longer time.

The reporting period is 7 1/2 years, but if you dispute it as obsolete around the 7 year mark it may be removed.

Negatives that are allowed to "fall off" never really get deleted, though they are not shown on the regular credit report. They only show up when a creditor pulls a full factual report.

Negatives that are disputed off do not show up in a full factual.

(generally the only creditors that "might" pull a full factual are mortgage companies)

The first thing you should do is learn the collecting SOL for your state. IF you are still within the collecting SOL disputing with the CRA's (consumer reporting agencies) probably would not be in your best interests if the collector is not actively collecting.

You would need to order your hard copy reports from each CRA. Do not use a tri-merge report, such as True Credit, etc., to dispute from as those reports can be different/inaccurate from your true credit reports.

You would need to know what constitutes inaccurate reporting by the collectors/original creditors.

I would suggest that you click on my profile and click on some of the links I've provided for the FDCPA, FCRA, etc.

You might also click on the last link I've listed to a free credit discussion board. Start reading in the Newbie Section and then in the Credit Forum.

Everything on the site is free to read, use and post any questions you may have.