Having a charge off on your credit file will negatively impact your score. This will often prevent you from being approved for new credit.

When approval does happen you will be forced to pay exuberant interest rates or make a hefty down payment. This is how lenders penalize people when they are incapable of making their payments.

Unfortunately the system doesn’t factor in that sometimes life just happens and some things are beyond our control. Often good people are faced with the choice of eating or paying a bill.

Credit bureaus have caused a false belief that when a charge off happens there is no recourse for the individual. That person will have to pay the high interest rates and large deposits for 7 or more years. This is not true.

According to the Fair Credit Reporting Act any inaccurate or unverifiable listing must be corrected by the credit bureau. Often creditors are not willing to spend the money or time to verify non collectable debts.

Regardless of the veracity of the listing it is typically removed when an investigation occurs. However complications happen in the initial stage of requesting the investigation.

This is because credit bureaus do not create extra income from investigations and instead spend money out of their own pocket. Their only reason to conduct an investigation is to obey legislation.

So credit bureaus will often use stall tactics in an attempt to frustrate the individual into giving up on the dispute process. This is why many people will hire a professional credit repair firm, to deal with the credit bureaus.