Credit Repair? Removing a bad record as a authorized user..?

My friend was an authorized user (not joint) on his brothers credit card account. His brother ended up making late payments and then doing a settlement on this account. Unfortunately, the credit for my friend, the authorized user, was also affected. The settlement appears on 1 out of the 3 agencies...therefore, I wanted to know what is the best advice, or best letter to send to a credit reporting agency to get this issue resolved..... I am not looking to give the issue to any CREDIT REPAIR company or any other services. I am looking for a Do-It Yourself approach. Thanks.

Public Comments

1. Co-signing and/or assigning multiple users to a single credit card is almost a guaranteed way to wreck your credit rating. The best advise for your friend is to learn and move on....only the passing of time will fix this issue. Sorry...wish I had better news....
2. How exactly can you repair your credit? Here are the simple steps in repairing your credit by yourself. The first step in repairing your credit is to get your credit reports and review them. It is better to obtain credit reports from more than one credit bureau<!--and get reports from the bureaus that are well-known and reputable in your country. The difference is that these credit bureaus are most likely the ones from which companies will get your records. http://best-loans.awardspace.com/repaircredit.htm When you are reviewing your records, list all the items that you think will not look well on your records. Aside from simply listing down these items, as you run through them, come up with reasons why you are disputing them. When you dispute these items with the credit bureau-->you will need to give a reason why you are doing so.Once you have identified which items you want to dispute, and why, you can write a dispute letter to the credit bureaus.
3. There is no reason to spend money for a CRO or on some website that charges for information. Since your friend is only an AU then the account legally is not his. You didn't mention who is reporting it, the original creditor or a collection agency. Your friend can tackle this in several different ways. He can ask his brother to contact whoever is reporting and request his name be removed from the account and from his reports. Or, since it legally is not his account he could send a dispute to the CRA's saying that the account in not in his name and to please remove it. Don't do a simple "not mine" on the dispute, they see those all of the time and it seems they often tend to ignore that statement. If it is still with the original creditor and that is who is reporting it and the creditor verifies the account instead of deleting it, your friend should send the creditor a "verification" letter. He should request that the creditor provide proof that the account is his or that he was a joint user on the account. He should also request that they delete the account from his reports. If it is a collector who is reporting then he should send a debt validation letter and request the same info as I mentioned for the letter to the creditor. He should do everything in writing. For the CRA disputes and/or the verification request with the original creditor, he should send it certified mail. For the collector he should send it certified mail return receipt. If it still remains then he should file complaints with the BBB, FTC, his AG and the creditors/collectors AG. He should include copies of the letters he sent to the CRA's and the creditor/collector and copies of the certified mailing in with his disputes. Hopefully his brother will get them to delete or the CRA's will delete if he sends a dispute and he won't have to mess with much of what I posted. While there are quite a few creditors and a small few collectors who will do the right thing and have the account deleted, there are a few creditors and quite a few collectors that could care less if they are poisoning the wrong persons credit reports. You or your friend might click on my profile and click on the last link I have listed to a free credit discussion board. You/he can do some reading in the credit forum on how others have handled getting AU accounts removed and also read over some of the sample letter templates on that site. All of the info on that site is free to read and use.
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