Your Credit Report Score Has Errors – Fix It Or Get Over It
Jon Arnold asked:
It probably comes as no surprise to most people that “somewhere” there is a credit report on them that knows everything they ever did, good and bad, financially. Unfortunately, this is where their knowledge stops though, and not knowing the real scoop about how this really works is actually hurting them.
There are three companies that keep track of your financial and credit history, which are Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. They know more about you than you think or perhaps are even comfortable with, but that’s what it is. They compete with each other so they do not share information between them. Some lenders report to one of them every month, other lenders report to another one, and large financial obligations like your mortgage probably report to two of them or even all three.
So far no news alerts but it gets worse. They are in business for profit, so they want to get as many lenders as possible to report to them for their customer’s credit information. They occasionally have specials for lenders to switch to them, so Discover may have reported to Experian last year and this year they report to TransUnion, and your Exxon account may have reported to Experian last year and now reports to TransUnion. This type of change occurs on a very regular basis.
Are you starting to see where a problem could (and does) occur? What happens is that not one of these credit reporting agencies really has a complete and accurate credit picture about you. Further, when a creditor of yours who reported to one agency that you were past due and then switches to another credit reporting agency, the first credit reporting agency continues to report you as being past due on that account because they never get corrected information.
The truth is that studies have shown that the majority of people in the US have at least one inaccurate item on their credit reports. That is almost a guarantee that there are errors on your credit report. The impact of those errors means that your credit score is being calculated lower than it really should be, which means that you are paying higher interest rates than you could be, as well as the other areas of your life a credit report affects.
There is no self-correct mechanism built into the system, and these errors will never be corrected unless YOU do it. There are right and wrong ways to get this information corrected and if you don’t do it right, you could make it even worse. You need to make your dispute be legitimate, not frivolous. There are a lot of people out there with accurate negative information on their credit report who are disputing that information with the credit bureaus in the hopes that even though it is accurate, it will disappear. You on the other hand have a legitimate beef that you want incorrect information corrected.
There is no sense in having inaccurate information about you being reported as accurate and factual. Get it corrected, and this is something you can do yourself, where you do not need to spend money on a “credit fix”. This is entirely legal, and is indeed your responsibility. You are only hurting yourself if you don’t get this done.
Sherry
It probably comes as no surprise to most people that “somewhere” there is a credit report on them that knows everything they ever did, good and bad, financially. Unfortunately, this is where their knowledge stops though, and not knowing the real scoop about how this really works is actually hurting them.
There are three companies that keep track of your financial and credit history, which are Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax. They know more about you than you think or perhaps are even comfortable with, but that’s what it is. They compete with each other so they do not share information between them. Some lenders report to one of them every month, other lenders report to another one, and large financial obligations like your mortgage probably report to two of them or even all three.
So far no news alerts but it gets worse. They are in business for profit, so they want to get as many lenders as possible to report to them for their customer’s credit information. They occasionally have specials for lenders to switch to them, so Discover may have reported to Experian last year and this year they report to TransUnion, and your Exxon account may have reported to Experian last year and now reports to TransUnion. This type of change occurs on a very regular basis.
Are you starting to see where a problem could (and does) occur? What happens is that not one of these credit reporting agencies really has a complete and accurate credit picture about you. Further, when a creditor of yours who reported to one agency that you were past due and then switches to another credit reporting agency, the first credit reporting agency continues to report you as being past due on that account because they never get corrected information.
The truth is that studies have shown that the majority of people in the US have at least one inaccurate item on their credit reports. That is almost a guarantee that there are errors on your credit report. The impact of those errors means that your credit score is being calculated lower than it really should be, which means that you are paying higher interest rates than you could be, as well as the other areas of your life a credit report affects.
There is no self-correct mechanism built into the system, and these errors will never be corrected unless YOU do it. There are right and wrong ways to get this information corrected and if you don’t do it right, you could make it even worse. You need to make your dispute be legitimate, not frivolous. There are a lot of people out there with accurate negative information on their credit report who are disputing that information with the credit bureaus in the hopes that even though it is accurate, it will disappear. You on the other hand have a legitimate beef that you want incorrect information corrected.
There is no sense in having inaccurate information about you being reported as accurate and factual. Get it corrected, and this is something you can do yourself, where you do not need to spend money on a “credit fix”. This is entirely legal, and is indeed your responsibility. You are only hurting yourself if you don’t get this done.
Sherry
