#faircreditreporting

Your credit can influence how much your car payments are, whether you can rent an apartment or buy a house, how much you pay for insurance, and more. Credit is so important to every day life, yet many folks in and around Sacramento don’t keep a close eye on their reports. It can be difficult when there are so many other things we’d rather be doing. But monitoring your credit report is worth taking the time to send in a request for a free credit report once a year.

While you can order your free credit report online or over the phone, often the best way is to order it by mailing the approved form, certified for good measure, via US Postal Service. The form can be found on the FTC website, click here.

You are allowed one free credit report from each of the nationwide credit reporting agencies, TransUnion, Experian and Equifax. The most thorough way to monitor your credit for free is to request one report from one of the agencies every four months, alternating between them. This way you keep a fairly constant and consistent eye on your credit reports throughout the year.

           Everyone should check their credit report on a regular basis. Doing so can help stop identity theft before the effects are catastrophic. It can also make sure that if creditors and lenders are reporting inaccurate information, you can dispute it before it adversely affects your finances. The main things to look for are signs of identity theft and incorrect information.

           Look for any items that are not about you. If there are inaccuracies of any kind, flag them, such as addresses where you have never lived, accounts that are not yours, employers where you never worked, or a bankruptcy not filed by you. Look closely to see if there are derogatory marks that are not accurate. If you made a late payment, that’s ok. But if you didn’t make a late payment and your credit report says you did, that could be a problem.

           Look at the inquiries section. If there are inquiries that do not look familiar to you, they could be attempts at identify theft or mistakes. Some inquiries you don’t recognize may be legitimate attempts by businesses to pre-approve you for credit cards or insurance. Usually these don’t affect your credit score.

           If you find that there are some of these errors, there are instructions in the small print of the credit report about how to dispute those errors. If you have already done so, and the errors persist, it may be time to contact an attorney who is experienced in this area of the law.

           A bill introduced by a group of independent and Democratic U.S. Senators aims to make changes to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) to place new requirements on the credit reporting agencies (Equifax, TransUnion and Experian) and also the companies that furnish information to those agencies.

           The bill was introduced as the Stop Errors in Credit Use and Reporting (SECURE) Act of 2014. The sponsoring Senators are Brian Schatz (D-Hawai’i), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)

           If passed, this bill would make it easier for consumers to identify and dispute errors in their credit reports. In light of the increasing numbers of errors being reported to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) (10,000 between October 2012 and 2013), the passage of this bill has the potential to combat a continually growing problem.

           An error on your credit report can have serious effects on your life. It can make it difficult to get a credit card, rent an apartment, or get a job. So when you find an error in your credit report, you want it corrected. The first step is to complain.

           Complain to the credit reporting agency (CRA) and complain to the credit furnisher (the company that is listed on your credit report as a creditor). It is best to do this in writing and, if possible, via certified mail. It may also help to make phone calls. When you do, write down the date, time, name of the customer service representative, and a short summary of the conversation.

           Unfortunately, these steps don’t always lead to your credit report being corrected. You can also complain to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The CFPB received more than 10,000 complaints about credit reporting agencies between October 2012 and October 2013. The majority of those complaints were because of inaccurate information on a credit report.