Do you know your rights to accurate consumer credit reports?
The Fair Credit Reporting Act, a U.S. law found at 15 U.S.C. 1681, is a law that requires consumer reporting agencies to ensure the maximum possible accuracy of your consumer credit reports. This is a right that you as a consumer in the United States has, but you have to be proactive in most cases to get the rights this law provides you to accurate consumer credit reports.
Essentially, consumer credit reporting agencies have very little incentive to get your consumer credit reports accurate until you have discovered an inaccuracy or mistake in your consumer credit reports and then notify the consumer credit agency of the problem in your consumer credit report. This is known as a dispute under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and it gives you important substantive rights and remedies against both the consumer credit reporting agencies and the banks, lenders, credit card companies, debt collection agencies, mortgagors and other entities that report your consumer credit to the consumer reporting agencies like Experian, Trans Union and Equifax.
Credit Report disputes can involve the inaccurate reporting of your credit by the credit reporting agencies for many reasons. Some reasons include a creditor incorrectly reporting the status of your account, someone else’s information is on your credit report or someone has stolen your identity and is opening fraudulent accounts in your name. Sometimes, old information, even though it is accurate, is wrongfully reported. When debt is sold, some debt buyers or debt collectors will use an incorrect date of last activity so that the delinquency appears more recent than it really is.