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As a consumer, you are supported by laws that protect you from inaccurate and unverifiable credit reporting!
At Innovative Credit Consultants, we make sure that these laws are being followed. Our first step is to audit the
credit bureaus or creditors using the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act. These two
laws have been established to protect consumers like you. Creditors and credit bureaus are legally obligated to
produce documented evidence within a reasonable amount of time, generally 30 days, to back the claims they make
about you. If our investigation proves that they cannot validate their claims, they must promptly remove any
undocumented information from your credit report.
The most valuable thing we have is our good name. As a consumer, the most common reflection of our reliability as
a trustworthy and financially sound individual is our credit report. Unfortunately, the information contained in our
credit reports, which are bought and sold daily to nearly anyone who requests and pays for them, does not always
tell a true story.
Credit bureaus collect and compile information about consumer creditworthiness from banks and other creditors and
from public record sources such as lawsuits, tax liens and legal judgments. The three major credit bureaus --
Experian (formerly TRW), Equifax, and Trans Union -- maintain files on nearly 90 percent of all American adults.
Those files are routinely sold to credit grantors, landlords, employers, insurance companies, and many others
interested in the credit record of a consumer, often (legally) without the consumer's knowledge or permission.
Conversely, consumers rarely check their credit record until after they've been denied or otherwise encountered a
problem. Throughout the 1990s, credit report errors have been a serious problem that several states and Congress
have addressed.
Our Credit Repair Knowledge Center has a wide variety of useful articles and other resources to both
educate you on credit repair and to teach you how to keep an eye on your future credit score. Here, you
can also view the variety of Acts that have been created to protect your rights.
Read about PIRG's sixth study on credit report accuracy and privacy issues.
A study by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group found that 70 percent of all credit reports contained
errors. These black marks in your credit history can have devastating consequences:
This is the PIRGs' sixth study on credit report accuracy and privacy issues since 1991. The PIRGs have also
participated in state and federal legislative battles to improve credit reporting laws. This report is our first
investigation of credit report accuracy since 1996 Congressional changes to the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act
(FCRA), designed to improve the accuracy and ease of access to reports, took effect in September 1997. The findings
of Mistakes Can Happen are troubling. An alarming number of credit reports contain serious errors that could cause
the denial of credit, a loan, or even a job. Further, some consumers never even received their reports, even after
repeated calls.
Among the major credit report accuracy findings of the survey:
• Twenty-nine percent (29%) of the credit reports contained serious errors - false delinquencies or accounts
that did not belong to the consumer - that could result in the denial of credit.
• Forty-one percent (41%) of the credit reports contained personal demographic identifying information that
was misspelled, long-outdated, belonged to a stranger, or otherwise incorrect.
• Twenty percent (20%) of the credit reports were missing major credit, loan, mortgage, or other consumer
accounts that demonstrate the creditworthiness of the consumer.
• Twenty-six percent (26%) of the credit reports contained credit accounts that had been closed by the
consumer but incorrectly remained listed as open.
• Altogether, 70% of the credit reports contained either serious errors or mistakes of some kind.
Among the survey's major access to credit report findings.
• Of the consumers that did obtain their credit reports, at least 14% of them were forced to call back 3 or
more times after receiving busy signals or had to write a letter to receive their report.
• And 12% of the consumers waited two weeks or longer to receive their report once they finished requesting
it. It took more than a month for one California man to receive his report.
• Overall, 15% of consumers who attempted to participate in the survey either made at least 3 phone calls
and never got through or requested their reports but never received them.
To read the full report, click here
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