Raise Your Credit Score and Start Your New Life

Just a few short years ago, a law was enacted which said that you could get a copy of your credit history report free once per year. This was a great idea, and a lot of people took advantage of this. But still, the one thing that puzzles me is why more people are not taking advantage of this law?

It is because not everyone knows that their credit report contains more errors that it is worth. Thats right, it contains errors, and the number of errors it contains is anybodys guess. The reason for this is the sheer volume of data that the credit bureaus need to process and keep track of. And then one lender who had a contract with say Experian changes their contract so that now they report to Equifax, and the problem becomes even greater.

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% 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% of that data contains errors, and you can see why this is a huge problem.

Something that most consumers are not aware of is they THEY have the responsibility for making sure that those errors get corrected. They do not self-correct over time. The only way will ever get fixed so that the right data is showing is if YOU dispute the data with the credit bureaus. And you need to do it separately with each credit bureau TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian because all three of them probably have different errors!

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.

When your credit history report is finally the way it should be looking, then your credit score will be as high as it can be, which is what you wanted to do in the first place!

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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.

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