Credit Reports – Errors Can Be Costly
In today’s society, we can’t function without credit We need it
to pay bills, borrow money, and to buy our homes and cars A
luxury of the current age is that credit is often granted easily
and quickly, a result of years of automation and refining of
record keeping The glue that holds it all together is the
credit report, a document made available to lenders by the three
major credit bureaus When an individual applies for credit or a
loan, the lender can see the financial history of the applicant
and make a decision quickly But what if the information on that
person’s credit report is wrong?
It turns out that more
often than not, the information contained on a credit report may
not be accurate While most mistakes are simple ones, such as
address problems, others are more serious Here are a few
examples:
names or dates of birth are occasionally confused by the system,
which can lead to credit reports that have completely erroneous
entries If you live in Minneapolis and have lived there all of
your life, it would be pretty shocking to see your credit report
indicate that you have defaulted on your mortgage on a home in
Miami Sometimes it’s even worse than that; some individuals
have had problems obtaining loans because their credit reports
indicated that they were dead!
errors – Sometimes correct information gets entered incorrectly
A bill paid on time and in full might be recorded as only
partially paid An open account may be shown as closed A loan
paid in full may be recorded as in default Sometimes these are
human mistakes and sometimes they are computer errors
obtains your personal information and obtains credit or loans by
posing as you This is one of the most difficult problems to
fix, and it often takes more than a year to even find out that
you have been victimized
The best way to fix these
problems is to be vigilant Check your credit report often and
report errors as soon as you find them The longer you wait to
report a mistake, the harder it will be to repair since
paperwork and other documentation often gets misplaced over
time A few minutes spent check your report once or twice a year
may save you hundreds of hours of work later
Tags | automation, bureaus, credit, dates, financial, history, identity, lenders, loans, major, mistakes, money, mortgage, report
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