How To Dispute Errors On Your Credit Report

As a good financial consumer, you know the importance of pulling your own credit report and monitoring it for any mistakes or errors.  Doing this can help you to prevent countless problems down the road.  In fact, it is one of the best ways to protect yourself from identity theft.  But, when you do find an error, what should you do about it?  How do you handle a situation like this to resolve the problem as quickly as possible and as accurately as possible?

How Errors Happen

Anything can have errors in it including your credit report.  Yet, this report is vitally important to your financial well being and it often tells others what type of a risk you are when it comes to credit.  Therefore, it is essential that you carefully monitor your credit report to make sure that if there is an error, somehow and for some reason that you get it taken care of.

There are a number of ways that an error can happen:

• You may have applied for credit of some form under a different name.  For example, if your name is David Smith, you may have applied under Dave Smith instead. 

• When reporting your application for your credit, someone may have made the mistake of entering your handwritten information incorrectly.  Your name or address can be mistaken, here.

• The wrong social security number was attached to the credit application.  Should someone inadvertently use your social security number instead of their own, their account can show up on your credit file.

• The lender of the credit mistakenly reported something to your account.  They can even report the wrong account information to your account.

• Sometimes, the application or information is incomplete.

• Sometimes, others are using your information to apply for credit.

Any of these situations may be mistakes and errors that were just accidents, but they can still do quite a bit of damage to your report, nonetheless.  The only way to know if in fact you have errors on your credit report is to check your credit report on your own.

To do that, make it a habit.  First off, you are entitled to one free copy of your credit report each and every year from each of the three credit reporting agents.  To make this a habit, pick your birthday or perhaps another notable day and remember that when that day arrives, it is time to pull your report and check it for errors. 

The process is absolutely simple.  You’ll just have to enter in your personal information to verify your identity.  Remember that it is illegal to look up the credit report of anyone else besides your own.  Once you have proven that you are who you say you are you will be provided a copy of your report right there.  You should print this out and go through it, carefully.

I Found An Error, Now What?

Once you have found an error on your credit report, the next step in the process is to determine how to fix it.  There are several steps that you can take.

1. First, determine if it is a mistake made by the lender.  For example, if they claim that no payment was made on your account, call them and find out if this is in fact true or ask them to fix the error.  This is often a clerical error that can be changed.

2. If the credit lender does not offer any help and you still feel that you are right, you can contact the issuing credit reporting agency and request for them to investigate.

The process of investigating your credit report is called disputing.  You will file a request in which the credit agency will go to the lender and find out what is accurate and what is not.  If they can’t prove their case or there is found to be an error, the credit reporting agency will correct it for you.  Each of the credit reporting agencies provide disputing information right on their websites.  It can take up to 30 days to hear back about your dispute and they are required to provide you with written proof of the changes made.