Daniel Rosen walks through three steps before disputing credit reports: verify your identity details to catch mixed files, keep credit utilization below 30%, and check damaging items for duplicates and true ownership. This checklist helps credit professionals prioritize what actually moves scores.
Most credit heroes only ever check one or two of these. So do this in order every time. Step 1, the identity layer. This is the personal information. It's the names, the addresses, the employers, and any old or mixed up data. And don't skip this thinking it's just paperwork, because errors up here are how files get mixed up together. And sometimes you'll find whole accounts that aren't even your clients. So take a really deep look and fix the foundation first. Two, what is helping? Before you touch anything, find the good, open, and positive accounts because those you want to protect. You do not want to dispute those, okay? And this is where you check utilization. How much of their available credit are they using? You want them under 30% because utilization is one of the biggest pieces of the whole score. And a lot of times getting a client to pay a card down under that line gives you a faster jump than any dispute ever could. 3. What is the damage? Now the negatives, the late payments, the charge-offs, the collections. And you're not just noting that they're there, no, you are checking the balances, who actually owns the debt, and whether the same account is getting reported twice.
