Get Yourself Out Of Debt (Part II)
What You’re Entitled To Regarding Your Credit Report
You are allowed by law to ask for an investigation into your credit file if you dispute any information as wrong or inaccurate. No one is legally permitted to remove any accurate negative information from a credit file. The truth is that you can do all that a credit repair company does for you, and that too, for little or no charge.
• If a company denies you a loan, insurance, employment, etc, you are entitled to a free credit report. Your report can be asked for within 60 days of having received the notice of action. Along with the notice will be provided the name, address and phone number of the consumer reporting company. Being on welfare, being unemployed, being the victim of identity theft, or of fraud makes you eligible for one free report a year.
• Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion – the nationwide consumer reporting companies are all required to provide you with one free copy of your credit report every 12 months. You can order your credit report either by phone, by mail or ask for it on the given website. www.annualcreditreport.com is the website. If you’d like to contact them by phone, 1-877-322-8228 is the toll-free number and the mailing address is Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281. You can order your reports from all the three mentioned companies at the same time, or separately. For a second report within 12 months, you could be charged up to $9.50.
• By law, both the consumer reporting company and the information provider are responsible for correcting inaccurate information shown in your credit report. You should take advantage of this provision and dispute any inaccurate or outdated information for free. Make it a point to contact your consumer reporting company for all the information regarding your rights under law.
Going about it
Inform the consumer reporting company of the information you think is inaccurate. Provide copies of all documents in support of your position. Provide all your contact information and make sure to clearly state what you think is inaccurate, why you think so and that you want it to be removed. Don’t forget to document the letter that you send them.
Consumer reporting companies will investigate the problem within 30 days. The organization that provided the wrong information would be sent all the data that is of concern in the matter. The organization will in turn conduct an inquiry into what went wrong and sends their report back to the consumer reporting company. The consumer reporting company is also obliged to send corrected reports to anyone who may have received your credit report in the last six months. This will be done if you ask for it to be done. For employment purposes, a corrected copy can be sent to anyone who had received your credit report during the past two years.
If the entire issue doesn’t get resolved, you can ask for the statement of the dispute to be filed with your credit report and sent to everyone who had received your report in the recent past. This however, is not a free service so will have to be paid for by you.
You could also tell your creditor, in writing, that you dispute an item. Copies of documents supporting your position should go along with it. If the provider reports this to a consumer reporting company, it has to include your dispute. The provider cannot report it again if the information is really found to be inaccurate.
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April 3rd, 2010 at 5:34 am
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