Fastest Way to Get Your Credit Report Updated

A company that says it can update your credit report overnight might sound suspicious---credit repair fraud is a top complaint to Federal Trade Commission year in and year out---but this is actually a common service called "rapid rescoring." The potential benefit to your score can be significant if used properly.

Identification

A rapid rescoring service can fix errors on your report overnight, but only for disputes you already prove are wrong. The major credit bureaus in the U.S. give some companies, mostly banks and other lenders, the right to update reports quickly when a lender admits to a mistake. A normal dispute process takes up to 90 days before the bureaus fix an error on a person's report; rapid rescoring companies do this in a few days.

Considerations

The credit bureaus do not allow private individuals to offer rapid rescoring service, so you must find a lender who deals with a rapid rescoring company to use this service. Normally, you give documentation of the error to a loan officer and he contacts the rescoring service. In some cases, the rescoring service may contact a creditor to confirm an error. Remember, you cannot change legitimate errors on your report nor will a rapid rescoring service investigate a case for you.

Benefits

One negative item, such as an erroneously report bankruptcy, can kill an entire deal. In addition, lenders often streamline the approval process by pulling a credit report and running a FICO score calculation. The fee for rapid rescoring is usually small---about $50 in 2011---when you consider that just a few points can raise your interest rate. On an expensive account, such as a mortgage, this might mean thousands more over the life of the loan. At the very least, a false negative item on a report will slow down the approval process.

Tip

You should only go for a rapid rescoring company when you find an error in your report shortly before shopping for a loan or during the loan application process. Disputes can drag on for months, and in rare cases, years. Check your report for free each year from Annual Credit Report and hunt for mistakes. You can initiate a dispute with the agencies for free and save some money by not needing a rapid rescoring service.