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FREE ANNUAL CREDIT REPORT[USA Visitors Only: UK Visitors CLICK HERE ] Your free annual credit report is very important to you for two reasons: 1. You have to know what your credit rating is, and what information credit companies are giving the official credit bureaus. If this is detrimental to you, then it could affect your credit rating and whether or not you can get credit in the future. 2. The majority of credit records that the credit bureaus are holding on you contain false information. Your free annual credit report can help you to find this out immediately and get the false information removed. This could be for a number of reasons: a) A relative that has bad credit could have been staying with you for while, and gave your address as their place of residence. Any bad credit they accrue is then placed on the credit record for your address and will count against you, even if you were not involved. b) Anybody else could give your address as theirs. There is frequently no check made by credit providers, and if they fail to maintain payments you could find yourself being refused credit. Your free annual credit report will list everybody they have registered at your address. c) False information can be transposed. People make mistakes when entering information, and typos easily happen. A reference number can be mistyped, and your record could be altered in error. d) Fraud. Fraud happens and a free annual credit report can help you to keep your eyes on your record and make sure that you are not the target of people seeking to borrow money in your name or on your address. If your free annual credit report contains false or misleading data that can harm your ability to get credit in the future, there are steps that you can take to repair this. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) gives you certain rights, and one of these is a free annual credit report. You can also challenge your report and have any negative records removed if they are not justified. When you dispute any entry in your online credit report, you are neither admitting nor denying any liability, but are simply disputing the accuracy of the record. Sometimes records remain on your credit report for too long, since the length of time they can remain there is limited by law. For example, bankruptcies or unpaid tax liens remain for no more than 10 years, and most other adverse credit records must be removed after 7 years. This is not always done until you insist on it. Because the credit bureaus are no more than reporting agencies, they don't have to justify any record, but have to act if you challenge the information contained on them. They then have to verify the records you are challenging with the lenders or debtors that have provided them. It is an unfortunate fact that anybody can provide adverse information about you to any credit reference agency or bureau without providing evidence or requiring you to agree with it. Once you have complained, the credit bureau has 30 days to provide proof of the accuracy of the entry, or must delete it (unless they can also prove that the delay is justified). Due to this 30 day ruling many records are deleted because the creditors do not provide the evidence in time. It is therefore well worth your while making sure that you get your free online credit report on a regular basis.
GET YOUR FREE ANNUAL CREDIT REPORT HERE - NOW! Before it is too late
Correcting Your Credit Once you have checked out your free annual credit report and established that it is wrong, you can set about correcting it. Here is how to go about it: 1. Identify where the free online credit report is wrong. The vast majority of adverse comments are connected with payments not being received by the lender within 30 days of the required date. This is known as "Past Dues". In order to avoid a past due, your payment must have been credited to your account within the 30 days, not just have been posted or received by the creditor. When potential lenders check your online credit report and notice several searches or inquiries made by other lenders in a short period of time, they will believe that you have financial problems and are looking for other loans to pay your debts. That is why it is not good to have too many inquiries appearing on your free online credit report. However, you can insist on having a statement made on your report explaining why there have been so many inquiries for credit. Perhaps you were trying to find the best interest rate from a number of lenders, or those with the best repayment deals. 2. Check out Your Account Profile Your account profile provides a general rating for your various listed accounts. These are Positive: meaning you pay when required, Negative: meaning you have defaulted on a loan or have been declared bankrupt, and Non-rated: meaning that a few payments have been missed and that you might or might not be struggling to maintain your payments. Anything but 'Positive' ratings will weaken your credit rating. 3. Challenge Every Adverse Rating Request the credit bureau to verify every rating that is not 'Positive'. You should write only one letter covering every item you are challenging, and they have 30 days to respond. Make sure your letter is signed for so that you can prove receipt, and it would be even better if you had an attorney retain a copy for you. They could not then deny either receipt or the letter's contents. Not that they would, but it is added security. However, don't have an attorney or credit repair company write it or post it for you, because they might be returned unopened: they will know what might be in it. If the negative entries are correct in fact, but you had mitigating circumstances, then include these in your letter. For example, you could state that another person living in your home that is responsible for the bad record is not financially dependent upon you, or even better, has now moved on. Other reasons you could provide include: a) A 'charge-off' code on your free annual credit report means that the debt is uncollectable, and this sometimes appears even after the debt has finally been paid. It must be removed if you can provide evidence that you have satisfied the debt. b) You can dispute owing the money, and the creditor must prove that you do. Banks and credit card providers frequently sell of bad debts to collection agencies. When challenged it is not uncommon for these to be unable to provide proof of the debt, because they did not also receive the agreement that you signed. If they cannot provide this they have no legal basis for demanding payment. c) Perhaps the goods that your debt refers to were faulty, and you did not receive satisfactory restitution, and so withheld payment. There are many reasons you can provide for not paying, or for not owing the money stated. When making the challenge do not be too specific, but simply state that you do not owe the creditor that amount of money that is stated in your free annual credit report, and always communicate in writing. If you have received no response within the 30 days, write again requesting an immediate reply. That will likely be: - The record has been amended - The record stands because the creditor disagrees with your claims: you have to also receive a copy of the proof provided. - The record has been removed or notations changed either because the creditor agreed with the error or did not meet the 30 day deadline. You should then request an updated copy of your credit report, and this must be provided by law. Also by law, if you do not receive a reply within 30 days of you making your final request for a reply, all disputed records must be removed from your credit record. You will likely have to repeat this several times to repair your credit record, and each time one creditor or another will fail to meet the 30 day deadline. It will take time, but you will succeed. However the first step is to get your free annual credit report, so get it here now.
Don't Delay Because your Credit Could be Getting Ruined by Inaccurate Records.
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