If an account is in dispute, is it considered by the credit score?

Hi, everyone. Rosa here with CreditXpert. Today, I would like to dispel a common myth that I often hear around disputed accounts, namely, if the account’s in dispute, it’s not being considered by the credit score, and that’s simply not true. When an account is in dispute or treated as disputed, there are key fields in that account that are not being considered by the credit score, namely, that’s balance, present status, and the historical payment information associated with that account. So, that information is not considered, but the account itself or the existence of it is. That means that, that account, the age of that account, other attributes about that account are still being factored into the score during the dispute process.

And that’s a really important difference, because things like external collection company accounts, like a medical collection, is the most common example of that. The fact that those exist, the fact that they occurred, and when they occurred are what negatively impacts the score. And because that’s the case, and that’s still being considered during the dispute process, that medical collection is still going to be looked at during the dispute process. So, disputes are complicated, just like everything else in credit scoring. It’s complicated. There’s lots of different dispute comments. Some of them are treated as disputed. Some of them are informational only, and the account is fully considered. So, things like dispute resolve, reinvestigation in process, or dispute resolve, consumer disagrees. There’s dozens more, literally. And even the same comment can have a different impact on a different bureau. Meaning, one comment can be treated as a dispute on one bureau and the exact same verbiage can be treated as informational only on another bureau.

The good news is, in CreditXpert What-If Simulator, you can simulate the removal of a dispute on any account and get an understanding of what the expected impact is going to be on the score. Which of course, will help you mitigate the final results if you need to worry about score improvement or worry about the damage that can possibly happen when the score, once again, sees that information in the balance and payment history fields. So, in any case, I hope this clears up the confusion around accounts and dispute, or disputed accounts. And if you have any questions for us here at CreditXpert, please reach out at info@creditxpert.com

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