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The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) And You
By: Jeanette Joy Fisher iSnare Expert Author
Your credit report gets viewed by other people besides credit grantors.
Potential employers and insurance companies can deny you employment, auto and
home owner's insurance based on your credit report. Understand your rights
protected by The Fair Credit Reporting Act.
No matter what many credit counseling scam artists may try to tell you, no one
can legally remove any information that is up-to-date and accurate from your
credit report. They can't do it, and you can't do it yourself. However, you CAN
request an investigation of anything you find in your credit file that you
believe to be either incomplete or inaccurate. That is perfectly legal, and can
be done at NO cost to you. In fact, anything that a credit repair company offers
to do for you can be done yourself, generally free or for a nominal fee.
In fact, there's a law that guarantees it. It's called the Fair Credit Reporting
Act (FCRA). Under provisions of the FCRA, you are entitled to receive a free
credit report if a company denies your application for credit, employment, or
insurance. You must ask for the report within sixty days of the refusal, and the
company must tell you which credit reporting company they used, and provide you
with their address and phone number. (The three nationwide companies most often
used are Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax.)
The FCRA has made it mandatory for consumer credit reporting companies to
correct information that's incorrect or inaccurate. To correct inaccuracies, you
must first contact the reporting company, in writing, telling them which
information is incorrect or incomplete. In your correspondence, include copies
of documents that will verify your claim. (Don't send originals!) Clearly detail
why each piece of disputed information is incorrect, and then ask that the
inaccurate information be either corrected or removed from your file completely.
It's generally worthwhile to include a copy of the credit report itself, with
each disputed item circled.
Once you've put your package together, send it to the company in question by
certified mail, indicating "return receipt requested." That will allow you to be
certain that the company received your package. Also keep copies of everything
for yourself, of course!
The FCRA makes it mandatory that the reporting company investigate each item you
have disputed, often within thirty days, unless they consider your dispute to be
unworthy of researching further. By law, they must also forward everything you
have provided them on to whatever company or organization initially provided the
disputed information in the first place. That provider must then review and
investigate the situation and report back to the reporting company. If the
provider has mistakenly provided inaccurate information, they must correct it
with all three major reporting companies.
Once the investigation has been completed, the FCRA mandates that the reporting
company must provide you with the results, in writing, and a free copy of the
report if the investigation resulted in a change in your credit report
information. You may also request that a copy of the amended credit report be
sent to anyone who may have received the disputed report during the previous six
months. If the report was given to potential employers, you have a right to
request that a corrected report be sent to any employer who may have received
the inaccurate report during the past two years.
About the Author:
Jeanette Fisher teaches six ways to build credit. Free credit ebook "Credit Tips
for Mortgage Financing" http://worryfreecredit.com |
