Alison had a credit card with a credit institution. Although Alison had been very regular with her payments, owing to a system error, her payments were not recorded and were being credited to another account. Her account showed defaults for over two and half months. Alison was completely unaware of this, till she applied for a mortgage. Her application was rejected owing to her repayment history.

She eventually took this up with her credit card company and had the issue resolved, but was unaware that the credit card company had not informed the credit bureau and these listings stay on your report for a five year period.

Credit Report Error Examples

Alison’s credit report error story is not an isolated one. Some common examples of credit errors are:

• Payments not credited to your accounts.
• Default interest wrongly charged to your accounts.
• Incorrect account set-ups there by causing payments to come out early and placing your account in arrears.
• You do not have any dealings with the lender listed.
• The listing on your credit report was over 5 years ago.
• The same credit default has been recorded multiple times.
• The debt default listed had nothing to do with you and you have not acquired the debt.

These are just some examples of the kind of credit errors that may creep into your credit report.

Improve Your Score with Correct Information

In addition to the five elements such as payment history, balances owed, new credit applied for, types of credit and length of credit history, your credit report also records the following:

1.       Your name (including previously used names)

2.       Your address (including previous addresses)

3.       Court judgments.

4.       Dishonored cheques.

5.       Bankruptcy orders etc.

To improve your score the first thing you must do is ensure all the information on your credit report is absolutely accurate. Also it is important to know what is included in your score and which companies report to credit bureaus before you wage a battle with creditors and credit bureaus because sometimes what might seem like a credit error to you might actually be a rent default you had forgotten about.

Credit Report Repair – Get Rid of a Credit Error

The next issue is to solve any credit report errors that might have occurred on your score. Follow some of the steps below to improve your score and repair your credit report.

• Obtain a copy of your credit report regularly (as often as six months if need be) to ensure that no unwanted listings and credit errors have occurred.
• In the event that there is a listing that has wrongly appeared on your credit report, get in touch with your credit provider disputing the credit error and question the credit report error immediately.
• In certain cases the credit provider might have an external resolution system and in that case you might to file a credit error complaint with them to improve your score.
• Finally if none of the other avenues work, talk to the appropriate credit bureau and raise the issue with them by lodging a formal complaint about credit report errors and how it is affecting your score.
• The Federal Trade Commission regularly handles complaints about credit errors so you could complain to them to restore your score.
• Be prepared to fight a legal battle if necessary. This is your credit report and you should not take credit errors lying down. If a creditor will not fix a credit report error, inform them you are willing to hand over the matter for your solicitors to manage.
• If you are unable to repair your credit report alone, seek advice from a credit repair company but be careful as there are several scams out there.

But the Fair Credit Reporting Act serves to protect your best interest as a consumer. It mandates that if there is a dispute credit report error, the erroneous information must be acknowledged and removed within 30 days.

However, the question you can you go about fixing errors on your credit report? Your step is to collect a copy of all three of your credit reports from the three reporting agencies including Equifax, Experian and Trans Union. After getting them, you need to compare the information on all three reports as it’s possible that some information to be included on one report but not on the others.

If you have reviewed your credit report and found some errors, you need to contact the credit reporting agencies in writing. You must highlight these errors and attach a copy to your dispute letter. It is quite important to keep a record of everything you send to these agencies as you may need to follow up when follow up.

To validate your claim, the credit report agency is obliged to contact the lender/credit to clarify the negative information. If the creditor/lender fail to come up with conclusive evidence to support their claim, these information will be removed from your report immediately.

You can easily and successfully dispute information on your credit report by aiming at the negative information to be removed to make your credit report look better as well as raising your credit score. Good news for you is that you can dispute your credit report in three easy steps.

1. Ask for copies of your credit report from three credit agencies online. You may find different information in these different credit reports and that’s why a comparison is essential. You can identify the errors after reviewing these reports.
2. Now after making comparison, your next step is to write credit report dispute letters to these credit reporting agencies. You can highlight and question the errors you have noted on your credit report. You must choose a registered mail to send your correspondence and keep the record of everything you include with your letter. If you dispute your credit report online, you can easily trace your letter with a tracking number
3. Usually credit bureaus take 45-60 days to review your claim as they have to get your data together and rule on the dispute you must wait for the response from the credit bureaus.

If you dispute your credit report online, you may get the desired results straight away, but you need to keep very good records of information you provide to the credit agencies.