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Consumers by the millions are in the red with their instant credit report from credit reporting bureaus. No matter what the instant credit report bureaus may think, credit reports are critical in the credit granting community. You might think of your instant credit report as being great. The claim of the credit reporting community to Congress and the media, is that 3/10 of 1% of all credit reports are estimated have errors. However Benjamin Dover, a credit advisor, reveals that his estimates in the last six years of studying their systems and interactions with consumers, is closer to 50%. In his opinion one-half of all credit reports have erroneous information of some kind or the other. Therefore your chances are much higher of encountering problems in leasing and buying a new home or car than you may realize. If it's in your instant credit report, it need not necessarily be true. In the world of credit reporting everyone is guilty until proven innocent. Thus it is of crucial importance that very aggressive and pro-active efforts are made by consumers to tackle negative markings on their credit reports. All the more so, if the information is incorrect. There's nothing like being kind of right about instant credit report. It can either be right or wrong and nothing in-between. Take an example where you have a Visa card with a balance of $1,000 that you stopped payments on 1/1//95. The credit bureau reports a balance of $4,500 on you on 11/17/04 that was charged off on 7/15/96. It's completely an error as the charge off date is irrelevant. It refers to the date of the last activity, last charge or last payment. If payment were stopped from 1/1/95, the default on repayment on the terms of the account would be 3/1/95, as revolving charges require payments after every 30 days. Since the last payment date was 1/1/95, the debt should have been dropped from the instant credit report by 3/1/03 at the latest. Get wise from the initial stages with copies of all three credit bureau reports to know everybody's perception about you. The three ways of getting your instant credit report are the free way, the slow way and the right way. A Free Copy of your credit report If you have been denied credit for whatever reason in the last sixty days, the federal law entitles you to a free copy of your instant credit report. The credit lender needs to write you a letter mentioning the credit-reporting bureau that provided them the information on which their decision has been based. Instructions must be included for ordering the report. Even employment may be denied to you on the basis of information from a credit-reporting bureau. Then per federal law you are entitled to a free copy of your instant credit report, along with instructions on how to order the report. You may be a resident of a state that entitles you to a free instant credit report from the Big Three whether you have been denied credit or not. The states in question as on August 2004 are Colorado, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Vermont. Per a revision on the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the FACT Act, you are to get a free copy of your instant credit report annually. What's more your free instant credit report should be from all three credit-reporting bureaus with only a phone call or online request. The Big Three and the Federal Trade Commission have adopted this law from December 1, 2004. Visit each of the credit bureau's websites for the current charges on an instant credit report in your state. All three bureaus charge roughly $8 to 9 for every basic report in each state. Don't forget to include a copy of your driver's license, as they need a positive ID in your request letter and check/money order. |
