Page one before any account

Section 1681e(b) requires a bureau to follow reasonable procedures to assure the maximum possible accuracy of what it reports about you. Most people read that as a rule about accounts. It is a rule about the whole file, and it does its most work on the part nobody disputes first, the personal-information block on page one. Which means: the order you work in decides how many letters you write.

A bureau stores every spelling a furnisher has ever sent and files each one as an alias. A misspelled first name from a store card in 2014 is an alias. Each alias is a hook, and a collector's automated match will hang an account on any hook it can reach. An address you never had is the same hook for a stranger's tradeline, an inquiry, a public record. Jenavieve told the mixed-file story in May and her mother answered it the same day. Here is the paperwork behind both.

When the bureau deletes the entry, it reviews what was attached to it, and under § 1681i(a)(5)(A) anything it cannot verify as yours goes too, in the same thirty days, with no letter from you about the account. Files with ten name variants routinely lose most of them the day the wrong addresses go. Which means: an account you were about to dispute may not be there to dispute.

1. Read page one before any account

Names and aliases: yours, and any real variant. Addresses: every one a place you lived or received mail. Employers: companies you worked for. Circle anything else, on all three reports; an alias on Equifax is often absent on the other two.

2. Correct page one first, and let the accounts wait

Send the personal-information corrections before a single tradeline is disputed, and hold the account letters until the results come back. The passengers are one reason. The other is that every account letter cites your name and address as the report prints them, and if page one changes after they are mailed, you spend a round reconciling instead of correcting.

3. Online for the plain ones, certified for the attached ones

This is the one correction where the bureau's online form is the right tool. Each bureau has a page for personal information. For a name variant or an address with nothing attached to it, the identification you upload is the whole exhibit, and the deletion usually posts in days rather than thirty.

Use a certified letter in three cases. The entry already has an account, an inquiry or a public record hanging on it, and you want the record and the § 1681i(a)(7) request behind that deletion. The online form comes back refused or "unable to verify." Or the entry has been deleted before and returned. Tomás's composite from March shows what the certified version contains: the entry as printed, the statement that it was never yours, your identification, and the request to review whatever rode in on it.

My mother kept the church's books in pencil for twenty-six years, and the first thing she checked each month was the name on the statement against the name on the account. The numbers could not be right if the name was wrong. No bureau I have met disagrees.

4. Pull again, then build the letter list

Days 30 to 35: results. Pull the three reports again, free, read page one first, and only then go through the accounts with the six lines and the leave-alone list. Most lists are shorter than the first pass promised.

One rule inside the rule. Never ask, online or on paper, to remove a name or an address you did use. A bureau that sees a request to erase true history reads the whole request as scrubbing. The sentence "I am not requesting removal of any name or address I have used" is what keeps the rest of the letter alive.

QualifyReady's read starts on page one of all eight files and tags the entries before it tags an account. The letters it drafts carry the entries exactly as printed, and you send them. The Handbook has the same protocol with the letter blank, at the start page. Step one, by Friday: pull the three reports, circle every name and address on page one that was never yours, and send those corrections before you write anything else. Know your file before your lender does.