Personal Credit Report: Send A Dispute Letter To Investigate Inaccurate Information |
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Your personal credit report is your history which contains all pertinent information about you such as: where you work, how you pay your bills, whether you've been sued or arrested or have filed for bankruptcy. This report is compiled by consumer-reporting agencies (CRAs) or credit bureaus that sell your personal credit report to businesses. If you apply for credit, insurance, employment or any other purpose, businesses use this personal credit report to evaluate your application, as allowed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act. It is, therefore, important for you to ensure that the information contained in
this report is complete and accurate. To start the process of verifying your personal credit report, you should review all the personally identifying information such as: names and aliases, addresses, social security number(s), date(s) of birth, state ID number(s), spouse information, and employers. If you find that any of the above information is inaccurate, misleading or outdated, you must dispute these mistakes first, as this data forms the base of all the other information in your personal credit report. When a piece of information appears on your report, it stays there because it somehow establishes a similarity with some incorrect personally identifying information. It is essential to dispute these inaccuracies first so that other erroneous items will no longer match your file. If you believe that some information is inaccurate, you should tell the CRA in writing about it, and include the copies (not originals) of documents that support your contention. Your letter should indicate your complete name and address and it should also identify each item that you want to dispute in your personal credit report. You should also explain why you are disputing the information after stating the facts and then you should request deletion or correction. It would be better if you enclose a copy of your personal credit report, encircling the items in question. Your disputing letter should be sent by certified mail, return receipt requested so that documents what the CRA receives. You should always keep copies of your dispute letter and enclosures. Having got your personal credit reports from all the three credit agencies, you should try to dispute every item that looks suspicious. At first, you should call the creditors that reported the item to remove it from your personal credit report. If they agree, they will send a confirmatory letter that they've asked the credit agencies to delete the items. Send your dispute letter along with this confirmatory letter from the creditors to the credit agencies. On receipt of your dispute letter, the credit-reporting agency is obligated to investigate your dispute. According to the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1997 (see Attachment 3), the credit bureaus must take the following steps: 1) Your dispute must be resolved within 30 days by the credit reporting agencies 2) If the consumer complains that documentation supplied by them was disregarded, the credit bureau must consider and transmit to the furnisher all relevant evidence submitted by the consumer the first time. 3) The credit bureau must inform the results of the investigation within five days of its completion including a copy of the amended personal credit report if it changed based on the dispute. 4) If any information is deleted from a personal credit report, it cannot be reinserted by the credit bureau unless the entity supplying the information certifies that the item is complete and accurate and the credit bureau notifies the consumer within five days. As inaccurate personal credit reports form the bulk of consumer complaints, the Federal Trade Commission says that it takes six or more months to resolve these issues. However, the three CRAs are trying to settle the disputes within 30 days. If an error is confirmed by an investigation, you have the right to ask that a corrected version of the personal credit report be sent to anyone who received your personal credit report within the past six months. Similarly, job applicants can ask for corrected reports to be sent to anyone who received a report for employment purposes during the past two years. This approach cannot, however, repair the damage done when your personal credit report was first pulled. |
