How Accurate Credit Listings Influence Credit Repair
If you have inaccuracies or challenging listings on your credit report, you may have considered the credit repair alternative. The Fair Credit Reporting Act or the FCRA was enacted back in 1979 to “promote the fairness, accuracy and privacy of personal information on credit reports”. This law also allows consumers to dispute information on their credit reports, which is crucial because it is likely that as many as 75% of all credit reports include inaccuracies and wrong credit.
The FCRA gave you the right to dispute the errors on your credit. After receiving the dispute the credit bureaus and lenders have a clear quantity of time to authenticate the legitimacy of the information or it must be removed from your account. Credit repair can be accomplished on your own or you can take on the services of a professional credit repair company.
But, be conscious that the Federal Trade Commission states explicitly on their website that “No one can legally remove accurate and timely negative information from a credit report. The law allows you to ask for an investigation of information in your file that you dispute as inaccurate or incomplete”.
This statement seems to be very upfront and it is one reason why credit repair critics try to discourage you from trying to repair your credit by convincing you that credit repair is ineffectual. However, the fact is that you can make substantial changes to your credit score and your credit report by taking steps to repair your credit.
However uncomplicated it may seem, there is quite a bit of vagueness in the FTC quote when it comes to actual people and actual credit reports. Since it is projected that up to 75% of all credit reports contain mistakes, credit repair companies can offer a great service. If you have a great deal of time and energy on your hands you might want to just submit the disputes on the erroneous credit yourself, however, particularly in this day and age, you may not have the time or the energy to devote to such a endeavor.
Since “accurate and timely” information should not be removed from a credit report, what are the criteria to characterize “accurate and timely”? Many times miscommunications or mistakes take place between consumers and lenders and something that may be considered “accurate” may not be that at all.
Often, there are things that show up on a credit report that are utterly inaccurate. Listings showing on your report that belong to someone else, are duplicate entries, are the consequence of identity theft or have been listed longer than 7 years, are patently inaccurate and need to be removed from your account. These types of items regularly show up on credit reports.
You also have the right to dispute any item that you feel may be misleading, ambiguous, unverifiable, biased or questionable. There may even be some things that the lender may have felt were precise but you were never able to stick up for yourself with your own side of the story. Lenders are not continuously fair and reasonable any more than consumers are always accurate. There are always at least two sides to every story and that is one reason why it is such a great advantage to be able to dispute the inaccurate, untimely, misleading, incomplete, ambiguous and questionable items on your credit report, either on your own or with professional help.
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