money sectionmoney sectionConsumers have rights when it comes to their credit report. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) governs credit reports and specifies the credit bureaus responsibilities when it comes to the information contained within a credit report. Under the FCRA, credit bureaus are not allowed to include false or erroneous information on the report. The bureau must also delete negative information that's older than seven years in most cases, although it may report a Chapter 7 bankruptcy for up to 10 years. If your report does contain errors or outdated information, you have the right under the FCRA to dispute that…
A mortgage denial can be devastating to your hopes of owning a home. While the disappointment and shock of seeing the declination letter is discouraging, banks do overturn mortgage denials on occasion. When your mortgage is declined, it is important to note the specific reasons for the decline and to takes stock of your options to counteract them. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), a lender must inform an applicant of the reasons it turned down the loan. Knowing these reasons gives you the opportunity to mitigate them to the bank.
TransUnion is one of the three national credit bureaus. Like Experian and Equifax, it gathers credit-related data and demographic information on consumers and sells it to lenders, insurers, human resources departments and others who need it for decision making. Although TransUnion and the other two agencies do not doublecheck their information for mistakes, consumers can check it themselves. The Fair Credit Reporting Act outlines a dispute process that can force TransUnion to fix any errors on your credit report.
When a debtor is unable to pay their bills and becomes delinquent, the creditor may put the account in collections. This means they give the debt to a collections agency and report the account to the credit rating agencies as delinquent, or "in collections." Collection reports damage a credit report and having a false report of an account in collections lowers your credit score. Fortunately, disputing an item on a credit report is a relatively easy process requiring some basic information and a little bit of paperwork.
You don't have any direct input on what goes into your credit report. The information is based on your financial choices and actions. The credit bureaus do not double-check it for accuracy, and up to 25 percent of reports have harmful errors, warns Bob Tedeschi of the "New York Times." The Federal Trade Commission notes that the Fair Credit Reporting Act gives you a chance to find and challenge inaccuracies through a dispute process.
Seventy-nine percent of consumer credit reports contain at least one error, according a 2004 report by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). Twenty-five percent of reports contain a serious error that could result in a person being turned down for a loan or line of credit. Since 1991, PIRG has researched credit report inaccuracies seven times, and each time, serious problems were found with the way credit accounts are reported. Your best defense against mistakes and inaccuracies is to obtain a copy of your credit report and challenge the inaccurate items.
As a consumer, you have the right to challenge a credit report with any inaccuracies. Use the following steps to get any errors on your credit report fixed.
Credit bureaus exist for the purpose of being non-biased entities that report credit experiences of it's subscribers. A subscriber is a creditor that supplies the payment history and account details of it's customers to the credit bureaus. The credit bureaus are required by law to investigate reported items that consumers dispute.
If you want to remove negative items from your credit report, you have the right to challenge anything on your credit report that is not right. With negative items on credit report, you can hurt your credit score and can hurt your changes of getting a loan or job. Be proactive and challenge any information that is incorrect and demand the credit bureaus to remove it.
