If you think something may be wrong with your credit report, you should follow these steps:
- Obtain your credit reports from Experian, Equifax, and Trans Union. You can obtain free copies from www.annualcreditreport.com once every year. Be sure to save your credit reports as PDFs for your records, and so you can share them with an attorney if necessary. Read them, and identify all items that are misleading or being reporting inaccurately.
- Write dispute letters to each Credit Reporting Agency that is reporting anything that is misleading, inaccurate, or obsolete.
- The Credit Reporting Agencies have a maximum of 45 days to respond to your disputes. Look in the mail make sure everything has been corrected.
- If at this stage all of the misleading, inaccurate, and obsolete reporting has not been corrected, you likely have an actionable claim and should consider hiring an attorney.
The consumer reporting industry is a multi-billion dollar industry that will either facilitate or imperil a consumer’s access to credit, employment, or housing. The three biggest credit reporting agencies are Experian, Equifax, and Trans Union. These agencies collect public and personal information about all of us, and they sell that information to businesses worldwide.
Wait, selling our information without our consent? Doesn’t that sound like Facebook? In April of 2018, Mark Zuckerburg testified in front of Congress about Facebook. The controversy was that Facebook and its vendors were collecting information about Facebook users without their consent, then selling that information to others. People across the political spectrum, and across the country, were rightfully outraged because they were powerless over their personal information being sold and traded among people and entities that we did not know. Many many of these people had ill intentions. Zuckerburg underscored his intention to make sure users can OPT OUT of personal data collection practices of Facebook and its vendors.
What was missing from the facebook outrage was the parallels with Consumer Reporting Agencies. Equifax, Experian, and Trans Union will not stop aggregating and selling your personal information – no, you cannot OPT OUT. What makes matters worse is how often they sell false and damaging information about you, that could cause you to be fired or denied a loan or housing. Ask Equifax how carefully they protect all of your personal data that they collect. Or just google “Experian data breach.”
Reform of the Credit Reporting industry does not seem to be on the horizon. However, until their business practices are better regulated, contact The Goldson Law Office to fix any errors that you find on your credit report.
