15 facts everyone must know about credit reports
Cynthia Stewart
May 10, 2007
View Author Bio
|
|
- Equifax, Experian and TransUnion: These three credit reporting agencies
determine the credit worthiness of people in USA by making credit ratings
for them.
- Every person can receive one copy of credit report from each of the
these credit reporting agencies absolutely free of cost.
- To obtain free credit reports, a person needs to log in to the website
www.annualcreditreport.com.
This is the federal law authorized source to get a free annual credit
report.
- Individual credit reporting agencies viz. Experian, Equifax, TransUnion
also provide credit report for a fees of about 10$ per report.
- If you have been denied a credit, you can apply for free credit report
from these three credit rating agencies.
- The three different credit rating agencies maintain different credit
reports and each one of them has to be obtained in order to get a
comprehensive picture of your credit report.
- Credit report has 4 different parts: identifying information about the
individual, credit history, public records, and inquiries made to the credit
file.
- Identifying information includes your name and address, and social
security number.
- Credit history includes detailed list of each of the accounts you have
and corresponding account numbers( the numbers can be encrypted). The other
details shown on credit history will be the date of opening of account, the
details of loans you took, total amount of loan, your payment history, the
amount you still owe and the status of the account.
- The public records part of your credit card describes the details
regarding bankruptcies, judgments, and tax liens.
- The inquiries section contains the details of enquiries lenders have
made on your credit history in order to give you loan, or issue a credit
card.
- Contrary to popular belief, any errors in credit report can be corrected
by applying to the credit rating agencies with a copy of the credit report
and documents to substantiate your claim.
- Any such claim has to be verified by credit rating agencies within 30
days of filing the dispute. If they are not able to do so the mistake has to
be removed from your credit report.
- If the credit rating agencies like the Experian, Equifax and
TransUnion still find the information correct, all is not lost. You can
contact the creditor for dispute settlement.
- If the creditor finds that the remarks in credit history are incorrect
they will get it corrected by reporting the same to credit rating agency.
|
Furl It