When looking at dates on credit report for dispute do you go by opened date or reported date?

I am looking to send out a bunch of dispute letters to the credit bureaus and collection agencies. I was advised to full out dispute items over 7 years and request debt validation for items over 3 years. I just dont know if I should be going by the "opened" date or the "reported" date.





Anyone have any idea?|||It is not the opened date or the reported date. It may not be the last payment date either.





The reporting date would start the first time you first became 30 days late and never brought the account current leading to the charge off.





If you had made a payment after that first 30 days but failed to bring the account current, it would still go by that first 30 day late.


If you made a payment after the account had charged off, it would not reset the first 30 day late time period.





The date the account was opened has nothing to do with the reporting time period, one exception could be a medical bill where the reporting period starts on the date of service with the medical provider. (medical debts are expected to be paid on the date of service)





If a collector buys or was assigned the account, what they place on your reports as date opened is the date they actually received the debt.





Do not use online credit reports, especially tri-merged reports.


Order hard copies from each CRA.


Experian and Trans Union are usually very good about stating the estimated removal date of the account. If it is near that date then send obsolete disputes.


(if a collector shows a later date of removal then the original creditor shows, then the collector had re-aged it)





If you are working on your reports, do yourself a favor and read the FCRA.


If there are collectors who have accounts of yours, read the FDCPA.


I have links to the FTC sites for those in my profile on here.|||If an item is over 7 years old, it is past the time period that a debt can be reported, those items should automatically fall off your credit report, if not dispute them.





It is not the credit bureaus responsibility to provide you with Validation of Debt, those request need to be done with the company reporting the debt to the credit bureau. A credit bureau only reports what information is sent to them.





As far your dates, it should be the open date or the date last payment was made on the account.|||You use the date that the account was opened. Reporting companies have a nasty way of "re-aging" the accounts whereby they'll just keep refreshing the date last reported so that it's fairly current.