This could happen to you. You are planning to buy a car and you are ready to finance it. You know that your credit is good so you give the dealer permission to run a report. He comes back with the distressing news that he cannot give you the loan because your credit report shows that you are deceased.
While people who know that they have good credit may sometimes scoff at the idea of credit report the fact is that scenarios just like that one happen every day. Credit reporting errors are extremely common and considering the massive amount of information that is constantly changing hands, that is not a surprise.
Every month in just the United States there are approximately 3.5 billion pieces of credit account information that are exchanged between lenders and the credit bureaus. With even a ?one in a million? chance of something going wrong with that volume it would still happen 3500 times a month!
The credit reporting system also has its own flaws. People with common names often find other people?s information on their accounts and even using a social security number is not foolproof as numbers can be transposed or sometimes they may just use a partial match. Mistakes are inevitable.
There are also situations where information appears to be accurate but upon further examination it becomes clear that the entire story was not told. It is just a fact that many items showing on a credit report can be incomplete, ambiguous, biased or questionable.
Your credit report may mislead a lender into thinking that you are a bad credit risk, when you are actually a responsible consumer who has never had a problem with credit. Mistakes happen every day and it is often unfair to the responsible consumers.
However, the Federal Government enacted the Fair Credit Reporting Act back in the 1970?s. It allows consumers the opportunity to dispute any items on a credit report that are misleading, incomplete, ambiguous, unverifiable, biased, unclear or questionable. Any item on a report can be disputed and a creditor will have between 30 and 45 days to verify the accuracy of the information or it must be removed from the report.
Credit repair can be done on your own and you do not necessarily need any expert help. However, it does take time, energy and expertise and you may want to consider professional help. Either way the chances are that you may need to repair your credit someday.
