Student Loan Defaulted
When your student loan goes into default, your account is turned over to collection agencies and various collection procedures begin. In addition, the government can garnish your social security benefits, your wages, and more.
These debts can be collected upon for life! However you can only have a negative mark on your credit report for a maximum of seven years. This is according to a law that Congress created called the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
If you have a defaulted student loan on your report, more often than not you will be turned away for a new line of credit. You are likely to have to pay interest rates of roughly 25% and place large down payments just to be approved.
There is a possibility that this mark can be removed from your report and a chance that you may be able to remove the debt entirely. To do this, you should dispute the collection marks on your report.
A dispute letter to each bureau containing an explanation as to why the mark is not accurate should be sent. For instance, the mark has been reported for seven years already, account is paid in full, not my account, and the like.
This is the most difficult item on a credit report to negotiate. As a benefit to you, we suggest that you hire a credit repair service to dispute it on your behalf. This will give you a licensed attorney fighting for you which will be knowledgeable of the new laws constantly passed by congress to help protect consumers.
We feel hiring an expert is worth the money since your credit score impacts every aspect of your life. This is a good idea since, compared to the high cost of a low credit score, hiring an expert can be done at very reasonable rates.
Understand that government loans, such as a Stafford loan or the Perkins loan, will be much harder to eliminate from your report. A private loan, such as Sallie Mae, will be easier to remove than a federal loan, but still difficult.
When the bureaus receive your dispute letter they will contact the creator of the negative mark and ask them to verify the debt. They will verify that the account is yours, the dates are correct, and the balance of the account.
Due to the Fair Credit Reporting Act stating that any unverifiable mark on your credit report must be removed, the negative mark must be removed from your credit report if the account can not be verified.
It is estimated that 1 in every 4 people have an error on the report that is costing them money in higher interest rates. The bureaus and lenders make errors all the time, but your credit is the one that will suffer. If this mark is in error, be sure to send any documentation that you have with your dispute letter to prove it is in error.
In sum we suggest you dispute this mark with the credit bureaus. Defaulted student loans are removed every day from credit reports and if you have it, it does not mean you will have a low credit score for the rest of your life.
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