Step 6

Tracking your dispute

The record you keep now is the record a lawyer would work from later. It costs an hour to build and it cannot be reconstructed after the fact.

What to record, for every letter

Record this	Why it matters
Date you mailed it	The start of your side of the story.
Certified mail number	Ties the envelope to the tracking record.
Date they received it	This is the important one. The statutory reinvestigation period runs from the date the agency receives the notice of the dispute — not the date you mailed it. Get it from the return receipt or the tracking record and keep the proof.
Exactly what you enclosed	"I sent them the payoff letter" is worth much less than a copy of what you sent.
Date each response arrived	Keep the envelope if the postmark is the only date you have.
What the response said	Keep the document itself, not a summary.
A fresh report afterward	Proof of what actually changed, or did not.

A folder structure that works

One folder per disputed item, and inside it, one subfolder per round:

Midland Collection - not mine/
  00 - reports/
    2026-08-04 Equifax.pdf
    2026-08-04 Experian.pdf
    2026-08-04 TransUnion.pdf
  01 - round 1/
    2026-08-10 letter to Equifax (as sent).pdf
    2026-08-10 enclosures.pdf
    2026-08-10 certified receipt.jpg
    2026-08-14 return receipt (received).jpg
    2026-09-08 Equifax response - verified.pdf
  02 - round 2/
    ...
  timeline.txt

The phrase "as sent" in a filename matters. Save the version you actually mailed, not the draft you edited afterward.

Keep a plain timeline file

One line per event, oldest first, no commentary:

2026-08-04  Pulled all three reports. Midland collection $1,842 on EQ and TU, not EX.
2026-08-10  Mailed dispute to Equifax, certified 7020 1810 0001 2345 6789.
2026-08-10  Mailed dispute to TransUnion, certified 7020 1810 0001 2345 6796.
2026-08-14  Equifax signed for it (return receipt).
2026-08-15  TransUnion signed for it (return receipt).
2026-09-08  Equifax response: verified as accurate. No procedure description.
2026-09-11  Requested description of reinvestigation procedure from Equifax.

Facts and dates only. Leave out how you felt about it — that is not what makes the file useful.

Reading what came back

Compare the new report against the old one line by line. Watch for the partial fix: a corrected balance sitting on top of a payment history that is still wrong is not a correction, and it is easy to miss when the number you were angry about finally changed.

Then pull fresh reports at 60 and 90 days. Deleted items sometimes come back because the furnisher keeps reporting them.

What each outcome means and what to do next →