Negative items on your credit report
A negative item is any entry on your file that counts against you. Some of them can be challenged. Some of them cannot, and knowing the difference before you pay anyone is the whole point of this page.
What people usually mean by a negative item
These are the entries that get looked at first when someone reads a credit file, and the ones our own report view groups and counts.
Collections
A debt that was handed or sold to a collection agency, which then reports it under its own name. The same underlying debt can appear more than once if it has changed hands.
Charge-offs
An account the original lender has written off its own books. The balance does not go away when that happens, and the entry stays on the file.
Late payments
A payment reported past its due date. Whether it appears at all, and how late it is recorded as being, are both things the furnisher decides and both things that can be reported wrongly.
High card balances
Not a derogatory mark and not something a dispute can reach, but it sits alongside the others when anyone reads your file. It is here so the list matches what you will actually see.
What a dispute can reach, and what it cannot
This is the part that usually gets left vague, so here it is plainly.
Reachable
- Information that is inaccurate.
- Information that cannot be verified by whoever reported it.
- Information that is incomplete, like a balance without a status or an account without an opening date.
- Information that is past the window it may be reported for.
Not reachable
- Information that is accurate, current and verifiable. Nobody can remove that: not us, and not anyone offering to.
- A balance you owe. A dispute is about what your file says, not about whether the debt exists.
You can raise a dispute yourself, directly with the bureaus, at no cost. What we sell is doing it for you: reading all three reports rather than one, deciding what is worth challenging, putting it in writing, and following what comes back.
Not sure what is on your file?
A free credit analysis pulls your TransUnion report and score and shows you what is on it.
More on how any of this works is in the frequently asked questions, and the rest of our explainers are in resources.