How True Credit Listings Affect Credit Repair

If you have inaccuracies or problematical listings on your credit report, you may have considered the credit repair alternative. The Fair Credit Reporting Act or the FCRA was enacted back in 1979 to "promote the fairness, accuracy and privacy of personal information on credit reports". This law also allows consumers to dispute information on their credit reports, which is vital because it is anticipated that as many as 75% of all credit reports have inaccuracies and wrong credit.

The FCRA gave you the right to dispute the errors on your credit. After receiving the dispute the credit bureaus and lenders have a certain total of time to verify the legitimacy of the information or it must be removed from your account. Credit repair can be accomplished on your own or you can employ the services of a professional credit repair company.

However, it is important to record that the Federal Trade Commission has stated very clearly "No one can legally remove accurate and timely information from a credit report. The law allows you to ask for an investigation of information in your file that you dispute as inaccurate or incomplete".

This proclamation seems to be very clear and explicit and that is one reason why the critics of credit repair will try to dissuade you from any attempts to repair your credit by telling you that trying to repair your credit is fruitless. The reality of the matter is that you can make a sizeable modification in your credit score and on your report when you repair your credit.

However forthright it may seem, there is quite a bit of vagueness in the FTC quotation when it comes to actual people and actual credit reports. Since it is probable that up to 75% of all credit reports contain mistakes, credit repair companies can offer a enormous service. If you have a great deal of time and energy on your hands you might want to just submit the disputes on the inaccurate credit yourself, however, in particular in this day and age, you may not have the time or the energy to devote to such a undertaking.

And then again, while you are not supposed to be able to get rid of true and timely information from a credit report, who determines exactly what is "accurate and timely". Mistakes and miscommunications occur commonly between lenders and consumers. In many instances, something that is considered to be "correct" may not be totally so.

Many credit reports have issues that are entirely inaccurate. Listings that belong to someone else, duplicate entries, listings that have been on your report for longer than 7 years, and anything that is the consequence of identity theft need to be removed from your account. These issues commonly show up on credit reports.

As a consumer you also have the right to dispute any item that you think is misleading, ambiguous, unverifiable, biased or questionable. Occasionally there may even be issues that the lender feels are accurate but you were never able to preserve yourself with your side of the tale. One motive why it is so imperative that a consumer can dispute harmful listings is because of the fact that there are always two sides to a story.

You can dispute anything showing on your report that is inaccurate, untimely, misleading, incomplete, ambiguous or questionable either on your own or by employing a proficient credit repair service.