Did You Score Your Credit Today?
Keep Your Credit History
Clean - Remove A Negative Credit Record From Your Credit Report
It can make a difference of
up to 18% in loan repayment costs. For example, on a 30-year, $150,000
fixed rate mortgage, a borrower with the best credit score, 760-850, will
pay 5.59%, or $860 per month, while someone in the worst score range will
pay 7.18%, or $1,016 per month. This can make a big different to the household
budget, so it's to your advantage to keep your credit score as low as possible.
The 3 major credit bureaus,
Experian, Equifax and Trans Union are similar and feature a "Credit Score",
which is derived from credit report information submitted to them about
you.
Under the Equal Credit Opportunity
Act, a credit scoring system may not use characteristics such as race,
sex, marital status, national origin or religion as factors, though they
are allowed to use age.
Credit scores are determined
by your bill-paying history, the number and type type of accounts you have,
late payments, collection actions, and outstanding debt. The total number
of points reflects how likely you are, statistically-speaking, to pay back
a loan.
If you are denied credit,
the Equal Credit Opportunity Act forces the creditor to tell you the specific
reasons your loan application was denied if you ask within 60 days.
Acceptable reasons include
high balances on charge cards, or bad employment history. Unacceptable
reasons include vague excuses such as "You didn't meet our minimum standards".
Sometimes you can be denied credit because of information on a credit report.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires the creditor to give you the contact
information of the credit report agency supplying the information. The
credit reporting agency can give you the information on your report, but
only the lender can tell you why this led to your application being refused.
However your credit report
may include inaccurate or incomplete information (credit records). Identity
theft is a growing problem, and can take up to a year to resolve. Nearly
10 million people fall victim to identity theft each year, costing consumers
$5 billion and businesses $48 billion, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
In this situation you have
to send letters to every one of the credit bureaus. Also learn your credit
rights by familiarizing yourself with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FRCA).
The FCRA gives you the right
to dispute inaccuracies and omissions, and it requires credit bureaus to
investigate your complaint (generally in thirty days), send you a prompt
response and correct any errors. The law as well requires the source of
inaccurate information (such as a bank) to correct the record at the credit
bureaus to which it initially provided the erroneous information.
Consumers working on their
credit reports say many times their letters are ignored by credit bureaus.
Consumers say even with proof a credit record isn't theirs, its removal
from their credit report can take 3 or even 4 challenge letters, because
the credit bureaus will have only corrected the facts in their own files
and not updated the credit report.
Send your dispute letter by
REGISTED MAIL. Credit companies will respond faster if they know you can
prove you filed a complaint on a certain date. Keep a record of when you
sent the dispute letters and what date you should expect a response. If
you have received no defense to your claim after thirty to thirty seven
days, send another registered letter requesting an updated credit report
and demanding the disputed credit record be deleted.
If the bureaus don't reply
in the thirty days, it must be that the information they had on file was
either inaccurate or unverifiable. In either case, based on data from the
Fair Credit Reporting Act, the credit record must be immediately deleted
from your credit report.
A few consumers have eliminated
negative marks on credit reports just by going through this process of
disputing credit records many times. Since some creditors will not take
the time to respond, you can sometimes win by default. Usually a bit of
progress will be made with each challenge.Remember, the credit bureau would
like you to quit bothering them because if you are not disputing the credit
report, they can legally carry on selling it as profitable information.
Author-Bio:
J Shipper is interested in
credit. To obtain your credit score, correct your credit rating, or even
avoid becoming a Victim of Identity Theft visit this website: www.credit-score-now.info
Click HERE
if you want to know your credit score now. It's FREE and INSTANT!
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