Are you paying for someone else's mistakes? You may be paying higher interest rates and insurance premiums due to a contaminated credit report and inaccurately calculated credit scores. It's important to review your credit reports and dispute any inaccuracies -and do so via certified mail in order to ensure you create a paper trail.
More often than not you may have to dig in your heals and stay on top of the cra's in order to make sure that inaccurate information is, and remains, permanently removed from your credit history. I know all too well that doing so can be time consuming and frustrating and requires the cooperation of both the creditors and the big three credit bureaus. Unfortunately, obtaining that vital cooperation -from both, may require making a "federal case" out of it!
See Smart Money's recent investigative article; Why the Credit Bureaus Can't get it Right!
A mistake on your credit report can cost you literally thousands of dollars, especially in this economy. So what can you expect from a big credit bureau if you ask them to investigate and correct the error?
The answer, for many consumers: About 50 cents worth of effort, conducted by offshore workers at third-party firms. That's just one of the findings from SmartMoney's investigation into why credit-report errors continue to pop up so frequently--and why consumers often have so much trouble getting them fixed.
To follow what one consumer advocate calls an "electronic hot potato," SmartMoney pieced together a depiction of the dispute process through information from trial depositions, internal company memos and the bureaus' own employee manuals--much of which the bureaus and their trade group subsequently confirmed. The process may be efficient, but it remains a mystery to most consumers, and a source of bitterness for some. MORE
Where to get those free credit reports
More often than not you may have to dig in your heals and stay on top of the cra's in order to make sure that inaccurate information is, and remains, permanently removed from your credit history. I know all too well that doing so can be time consuming and frustrating and requires the cooperation of both the creditors and the big three credit bureaus. Unfortunately, obtaining that vital cooperation -from both, may require making a "federal case" out of it!
See Smart Money's recent investigative article; Why the Credit Bureaus Can't get it Right!
A mistake on your credit report can cost you literally thousands of dollars, especially in this economy. So what can you expect from a big credit bureau if you ask them to investigate and correct the error?
The answer, for many consumers: About 50 cents worth of effort, conducted by offshore workers at third-party firms. That's just one of the findings from SmartMoney's investigation into why credit-report errors continue to pop up so frequently--and why consumers often have so much trouble getting them fixed.
To follow what one consumer advocate calls an "electronic hot potato," SmartMoney pieced together a depiction of the dispute process through information from trial depositions, internal company memos and the bureaus' own employee manuals--much of which the bureaus and their trade group subsequently confirmed. The process may be efficient, but it remains a mystery to most consumers, and a source of bitterness for some. MORE
For more info see a few earlier blogs:
Complaints against credit bureaus costly, frustrating and endless
Court Ruling; Credit Reporting Bureaus must Revamp their Systems -and Remove Old Debts...
Where to get those free credit reports
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