What the bureaus legally have to do when you dispute
Section 611 forces an investigation within 30 days. Here's exactly what triggers it and what counts as a valid response.
When you mail a written dispute to Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion, you are not asking for a favor. You are triggering a federal obligation. Under Section 611 of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. §1681i), the bureau must conduct a 'reasonable reinvestigation' of the item you challenged, and it has 30 days from the day it received your letter to complete that process.
The 30-day clock starts when the dispute arrives, which is why we use certified mail with tracking. If you add information to your dispute mid-investigation, the bureau gets 15 extra days. If you never hear back, or if the response is late, the item must be deleted — not merely flagged or hidden, deleted from your file.
The rest of this is inside the portal
The step-by-step tactics, exact wording, and escalation sequence live in your Fix My Reports workspace, where they're applied to your own report items. Start with a $1 trial, then $50/month — cancel anytime.