In 1970 the Fair Credit Reporting Act or the FCRA was enacted. This law gives consumers the right to dispute any item showing on their credit report that may be inaccurate, incomplete, untimely, misleading, unverifiable, biased, ambiguous or unclear.
This includes foreclosures, charge-offs and bankruptcies.
The fact is that inaccurate credit such as false identities; inaccurate balances, untimely listing, overly ambiguous listings and more are very common on credit reports.
It is estimated that as many as 75% of all credit reports contain mistakes. You can dispute anything that shows up on your credit report for any reason if you feel that it is not quite accurate.
The creditor and credit bureau will then have a certain amount of time to verify the accuracy of the listing. If it cannot be verified within the time frame then it must be removed from the account.
The FCRA gives you the right to credit repair however, it does not give you the right to ?debt repair?. You do not have the right to remove valid and accurate debt that is showing on your report. If you owe a valid debt you are liable for it until it is paid off. You cannot legally use credit repair to evade a legitimate debt.
Occasionally there are critics who confuse the two issues. Credit repair is a useful and valid service that many people can benefit from while debt repair is illegal.
Credit repair does not give you the right to have a valid, legitimate and accurate listing on your report to be deleted. However, many times the listings are inaccurate, ambiguous, misleading, unverifiable, biased and outdated and in that case you have every right to dispute it and get it removed. Valid debts however, legally must stay.
When you have debt problems you can do a few legal things. You can pay down the debt or you can pay if off. You have the option to consolidate all of your debt into one, fixed rate loan. You can also speak to your creditors and see if they would be willing to settle your debt. This may relieve you of your debt but it could also give you bad credit.
Credit repair cannot legally be used to remove a legitimate debt. Credit repair is reserved for inaccurate credit. However, you should not let this dissuade you and you should take full advantage of your rights to credit repair. When you have inaccurate, misleading or ambiguous credit you need to get it removed.
You can attempt to do credit repair on your own or you can also engage the services of a legitimate credit repair organization. A few outstanding companies operate within full compliance of the law and they offer an extremely valuable service that can benefit you in your credit repair.
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