Credit Report Repair

A credit report is a powerful piece of paper. Lenders look at it closely when deciding whether or not to give you a loan. Insurance companies can use it to determine your rates or whether they will cover you at all. Employers can access it and use it as a factor in offering you a job or promotion. With that much significance placed on your credit report, it is absolutely essential that the information it contains paints you in a good light.

According to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, consumers can dispute mistakes in their credit report for free. It can be a little time consuming to pull your report, document the error, type up a letter and send it in, so many people hire credit repair agencies to do the boring work for them. There is no real reason, other than the issue of time, to pour out money for work that you can easily do yourself.

Don't be fooled into thinking that you don't have the knowledge to clean up your credit report and that a credit repair agency knows a bunch of angles that have eluded you. Everything you need to know in order to fix errors on your credit report is readily available and there is nothing in the process that is required to be done by a third party or professional agency that specializes in credit repair.

If any information on your credit report is inaccurate, out-dated, unverifiable or misleading, you can dispute this information. The portion of the FCRA which relates directly to attempts to legally repair credit scores has to do with disputing inaccurate, unverifiable, misleading and outdated information included in one's credit report. The next thing to learn about how to repair credit scores is how to report inaccurate information.

If you find any inaccuracies, you can have your credit repaired by requesting, in writing, that the credit bureau investigate the disputed items. If you have any supporting documentation, include it, otherwise simply state where the confusion is and request that it's looked into. This benefits you in two ways: first, if the credit bureau can not verify the information you are disputing, by default it must be removed from your file; second, if the bureau doesn't respond to your request for an investigation within 30 days, the information in dispute must be removed.