Denied Credit? Find Out The Reason With A Free Credit Report |
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Your free credit report, along with your credit score, is one of the most important parameters that determine whether you are eligible to get a loan and the interest rate, in case your loan is approved. This important financial document helps you to be aware of your financial standing without costing you anything. Moreover, if you review your free credit report every 12 months, you will be kept abreast of your accounts so that if anyone fraudulently opens an account in your name, you know of it and then you can scuttle the evil designs of the thieves. If you catch the fraud early enough you can take remedial actions and ensure that you are not held responsible for the actions of the people responsible for the scam. You should know that you are entitled to one free credit report copy per year from the credit reporting agencies. You should make the best use of the same and you should also know how to get a free credit report if you have been denied credit. If you have been denied credit, how do you get a free credit report? According to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, if you have been denied credit recently, you are entitled to get a free credit report. If a creditor turns down your request for a loan for whatever reason, he must send you a letter stating why and what reporting agency they used, to get the information from. The above Act entitles you to request a free credit report copy from the agency used, within a period of sixty days from that time. The letter from the creditor should include the reporting agency's contact information, where you can call, write, or visit them at their website. If you want to know as to what was the deciding factor for your credit denial, you will get this information in your free credit report, which will also display who has requested to see your credit report and when. How can you ensure that credit is not denied to you in the future? When you receive a copy of your free credit report, you must study it very carefully to find out the reason why your request for credit was denied. If you can find that reason in the letter that you got from the creditor, then you can get the clue as to what to look for. However, creditors mostly use vague descriptions for the reasons of denial and you will be left without any tangible clue. In any case, you should hold on to any straw of information and then try to eliminate those shortcomings and clean up your report. It is also possible that you may find inaccurate or outdated information in your free credit report such as your personal information. You will have to contact the reporting agency, start the disputing process and try to have the inaccurate or outdated information removed or reconciled at the earliest. Remember that you will have to dispute each inaccuracy separately and this whole process might take some time and might need to be repeated before you can observe any results. All free credit report disputes will need some form of proof before they get considered. If you want to make sure that you are not denied credit again, you should start repairing your credit by making all your payments on time to improve payment history and consolidating some of your credit cards to ones with lower interest rates, and limiting yourself to applying for credit only when absolutely necessary. Can everyone get a free credit report? Everyone is entitled to get one free credit report copy every 12 months. For getting it, you should contact any one of the three credit reporting agencies directly, either by phone, mail, or online at their websites. Having got the report you must clean it up, if necessary. It will make your life much easier in the future. |
