When you buy something on credit, the business that extends you credit reports the transaction and all subsequent transactions related to the purchase to national credit reporting agencies. This applies to all forms of financed purchases, including home mortgages, auto loans, credit, charge and department store card purchases, and even purchases made under contract that are not financed, such as cell phone service. The set of information about your purchases and repayment patterns is your credit report. Federal laws that regulate credit-reporting agencies allow you to clean up your credit for free.
Scores
Reporting agencies assign a value to your creditworthiness, referred to as a credit score, based on the information in your credit report. The better your credit score, the more favorably potential lenders look at your requests for credit. Because the information in your credit report and the resulting credit score can affect lenders' decisions about whether to extend you credit (and affect the terms of credit), the information in your credit report must be accurate. Have any inaccurate information removed from your report.
Free Report
Under federal law, consumers have the right to annually review all the information in their credit reports at no cost. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reports that the official resource for obtaining the information in your credit report is the AnnualCreditReport.com website. While there are numerous websites that may offer to provide credit report information, the AnnualCreditReport.com website is the only officially designated website. You can visit the website, call the toll-free number, 1-877-322-8228, or fill out the Annual Credit Report Request form available for download from the AnnualCreditReport.com site and mail it to the Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281.
Regardless of which method you choose to request the information, you are entitled to receive your complete credit report, at no cost, from Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. You can choose to have the information provided to you online, by fax, or by mail.
Disputes
When you receive your credit reports, examine the information in each report to ensure that it is accurate. Credit reports may contain misinformation. For example, a business that extended credit to you may have inaccurately reported that you made late payments. You may find that there is information in the report that is not related to you at all, but is instead information about someone with a similar name. Whatever the source of the inaccurate information, you are entitled by federal law to dispute the information in your report at no cost to you. You may choose to dispute the information online or by mail; each reporting agency provides information on how to dispute an entry in your credit report.
When you file a dispute, the reporting agency is obligated to contact the business that gave them the information to confirm that the information is accurate. If the business reports that the information is not accurate, or if the business does not respond to the query, the reporting agency must remove the misinformation from your credit report.
Monitoring
Information that is found to be erroneous and that is removed from your credit report generally will not reappear in your report. However, it is useful to monitor your credit report consistently. You can request a free copy of your credit report annually, and dispute the information in the report at no cost. By monitoring the information in your credit report, you can ensure that it remains accurate.
0 comments:
Post a Comment