Credit Repair And Precise Credit Listings
If you have inaccuracies or difficult listings on your credit report, you may have considered the credit repair choice. 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 imperative because it is likely that as many as 75% of all credit reports have inaccuracies and untrue credit.
You have the right to dispute the errors on your credit and if the credit bureaus and lenders cannot prove the precision of the information it must be removed from your file. You can do credit repair on your own or you can also appoint a professional service to help you.
However, it is vital to note that the Federal Trade Commission has stated very explicitly “No one can legally remove accurate and timely 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 declaration seems to be very unambiguous and definite and that is one reason why the critics of credit repair will try to dissuade you from any attempts to repair your credit by telling you that trying to repair your credit is ineffectual. The reality of the matter is that you can make a considerable modification in your credit score and on your report when you repair your credit.
However simple it may seem, there is quite a bit of ambiguity in the FTC quote when it comes to real people and actual credit reports. Since it is estimated that up to 75% of all credit reports contain mistakes, credit repair companies can offer a enormous service. If you have a great deal of time and energy on your hands you might want to just submit the disputes on the inaccurate credit yourself, however, in particular in this day and age, you may not have the time or the energy to devote to such a venture.
And then again, while you are not supposed to be able to get rid of precise and timely information from a credit report, who determines exactly what is “accurate and timely”. Mistakes and miscommunications occur commonly between lenders and consumers. In many instances, something that is considered to be “truthful” may not be totally so.
Frequently, there are items that show up on a credit report that are utterly erroneous. Listings showing on your report that belong to someone else, are identical entries, are the outcome of identity theft or have been listed longer than 7 years, are obviously imprecise 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 deceptive, ambiguous, unverifiable, biased or questionable. There may even be some things that the lender may have felt were accurate but you were never able to stick up for yourself with your own side of the story. Lenders are not always fair and reasonable any more than consumers are always right. There are always at least two sides to every story and that is one basis why it is such a great benefit to be able to dispute the inaccurate, untimely, misleading, incomplete, ambiguous and questionable items on your credit report, either on your own or with specialized assistance.
