Raise Your Credit Score and Start Your New Life

A few years ago, a law was passed that said that you are able to get one free copy of your credit report every year. This applies to all three of the major credit bureaus. But the thing that mystifies me is why so few people are taking advantage of this.

I think the reason is because not everyone realizes that ones credit report contains more inaccurate data that you can shake a stick at. Who knows how many errors it contains, but chances are great that your report contains errors. This is due in large part to the massive amount of data that the credit agencies need to store for each and every consumer and business on the planet. This is compounded by the fact that one lenders reported to TransUnion last year and has changed contracts and is now reporting to Equifax this year.

So think about it all consumers and all businesses, past and present, times the number of open accounts that each of them currently has and has had during their lifetime. This amounts to several BILLION records that they need to keep track of. If only 1%25 of that data is in error, that still means that over a million records are wrong in their database. Now compare that to the studies that indicate that up to 30%25 of that data contains errors, and you can see why this is a huge problem.

But something that most people are not in tune with is that it is THEIR responsibility to get those errors corrected. The errors do not correct themselves, and will never get corrected if you do not initiate action to get them corrected. One of the things that compounds this problem even more is that you need to dispute that error with each of the three credit bureaus Equifax, Trans Union, and Experian because they do not share data between them.

One of the biggest problems with having errors in your credit report is that your credit score is not reported accurately. This could be good or could be bad, but for the most part, you need to assume it is bad and that the credit score assigned to you by the credit bureaus (individually) is lower than it should be.

You need to get those errors and get that negative information removed. How do you do that? You start by getting yourself a copy of your credit report, and get a separate report from each agency. Read through the report very carefully and note anything that is wrong or is in error. Then file a dispute letter.

After you have filed a dispute form with the credit bureau, they then have 30 days to either verify the information as being accurate, or deleting it from your credit report. The thing that makes that decision is whether or not the lender verifies the information as being accurate, or just plain does not respond. If this is an account that has been paid off for several years, even though you had some problems with the account early on, the lender may just not take the time to respond at all, in which case the data needs to be deleted.

Then there is the stuff that is REALLY wrong, and you have every right to request that your credit report reflect accurate information. The procedure is exactly the same file a dispute with the credit bureau stating the facts, and they have 30 days to either get that information verified or to remove it.

After all of this, you should have a credit report that reads the way you want it to read, and that will result in your credit score being as high as it can be.

Jon is a computer engineer who maintain a variety of web sites based on his knowledge and experience. For more information about Raising Your Credit Score, please visit his web site at Improve Your Credit Score.