credit report - A Summary of the Fair Credit Reporting Act

This summary of the Fair Credit Reporting Act will explain what you can legally do if you want to repair your own credit report. No matter what you hear, you can dispute credit information on your credit report if you understand the legal rights you have under this law. The Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act was enacted by the United States Congress in 1971. In summary, it says that the credit bureaus must investigate a consumer dispute if they want to challenge credit information on his or her credit report. It also states that credit bureaus are required to complete the investigation within a 30 day period. If the credit bureau finds that the disputed information is inaccurate or cannot be verified, they must promptly delete that information. But there are some cases when a consumer dispute can be ignored by the credit bureaus. If you challenge a negative credit listing on the basis of things like health problems, divorce or job loss, the credit bureaus are entitled to ignore those kinds of disputes. The information you dispute must be either old or incorrect. You must file a valid dispute where the credit bureaus can contact the creditor and confirm that the new information you gave them is accurate and can be verified. If the credit bureau does not receive verification from the creditor within 30 days, the Fair Credit Reporting Act says the credit bureau must promptly delete that credit listing. Even though the process sounds simple, the credit bureaus make it more difficult than you can imagine. The credit bureaus don't like the credit repair companies or anyone offering instruction on how to repair your own credit report. Why? Because it means more work for them. The credit bureaus blast credit repair companies in the media and warn people against using credit repair services. The bureaus openly deny that any information can even be removed from your credit report. It is reported that 79 percent of all credit reports contain some type of errors, and up to 25 percent of these errors could result in credit denials, hiked interest rates, and even lost employment opportunities. If you have any amount of negative credit on your credit report it will cause the interest on all loans you apply for to be much higher. It will even become a barrier to your credit approval. That will cost you a fortune in unnecessary higher interest resulting in higher payments on anything you buy. How you decide to address or dispute credit information is entirely up to you. But regardless of what you may hear in the news, thousands of people have restored their credit. You can choose to repair your own credit report or hire a professional service to do it for you. The truth is you do not have to endure bad credit for seven to ten years if you want to challenge the accuracy of your credit report. This summary of the Fair Credit Reporting Act shows you it is possible for you to repair your own credit report and the sooner you start the better. Copyright ? 2005 Credit Repair Facts.com All Rights Reserved. This article is supplied by http://www.credit-repair-facts.com where you will find credit information, debt elimination programs and informative facts that give you the knowledge to correct your own credit and credit report. For more credit related articles like these go to: http://www.credit-repair-facts.com/articles_1.html Article Source:http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gary_Gresham credit report - Disputing Credit Card Charges Let's imagine for a moment that you've just received your credit card bill in the mail, and you think the only purchase you made with it the previous month was at the gas station. What do you do then, when you find three purchases at Old Navy, and a bunch of other purchases you know you didn't make? Do you know what rights you have regarding fraudulent purchases on a credit card in your name? How about your rights if you purchased an item with a credit card, but never received the products you ordered? If these problems have not happened to you yet, you are lucky. These are common situations credit card users face every day, and it can help you to know before something like this happens to you what your rights are, and what your responsibilities are in the matter. When You Are Not Satisfied With Purchase One of the benefits of using a credit card to make purchases is the additional protection they provide if you make a purchase that you are unsatisfied with. For example, maybe you used a credit card to pay the contractors who were hired to repair your shower leak, but there is still water on the bathroom floor. Obviously, you are not satisfied with the work they completed, and you don't want to pay for it. The problem is, you charged it on a credit card and now the bill has come! Your first step is to contact the contractor, or the merchant you made your purchase from. Most of the time, the merchant is more than happy to replace a broken item, perform the service again or refund the purchase back to your credit card. If you make a phone call, document it and follow up with a letter to cover your tracks in the event the merchant doesn't follow through. If for some reason the merchant decides they are not going to do anything to correct the situation, you should immediately contact your credit card company and report the information. Don't wait to report the problem on a later date- most credit card companies require you to report a problem as soon as you see it on the statement in order to benefit from any of the protection they provide. Charges You Didn't Make Did you know that federal law is involved in helping limit credit cardholder's responsibilities for charges on credit cards that they did not make themselves? The Fair Credit Billing Act actually limits your responsibility to just $50 for any charges you did not authorize. If you open your credit card bill and find charges not made by you, there is a process you should follow to get it resolved as quickly and painlessly as possible. Firstly, call the credit card company and explain the charges that were not made by you. They will give you instructions as to what to do next. Then, you should take the time to find and review all of your recent credit card statements in case there were other charges that you may have missed. The credit card company will most likely ask you to sign a form to confirm that you were not the one who made the charges in dispute. Don't use the card while you are disputing charges. Once you finally get a resolution and get the charges removed, be sure to order your credit report from all of the major credit bureaus in order to make sure that the record has been updated there- because chances are the time it takes to resolve fraudulent charges will have caused late payments on that credit card that may have been reported. You can get more information about credit card disputes from the Fair Trade Commission.