Third Party Credit Report Providers
2010
Accurate Credit Reporting Relies on Consumer Action
Originally passed in 1970 and amended multiple times since, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) was created with the goal of getting credit bureaus to operate in a way that is fair and equitable to individual consumers while still fulfilling the needs of lenders, employers, insurance companies and others who use your credit files. The Act set out to accomplish this by putting in place mechanisms to ensure the personal and financial information contained in credit reports is accurate, relevant, kept confidential, and only made available under specific circumstances. It is the Fair Credit Reporting Act that made possible a consumer’s ability to repair bad credit.
The part of the Fair Credit Reporting Act that credit correction primarily focuses on is the accuracy of information. This is the one trait of the four where the responsibility of ensuring fair credit lies with the consumer. With the other three, it is the credit bureaus that are accountable for what types of information get included in credit reports, how this information is provided to third parties, and which third parties have access to it. But with the issue of accuracy, the Fair Credit Reporting Act does not force the credit bureaus to prove that information is accurate when it is first added to your credit reports. Instead, the Act gives you the ability to question the information in your credit reports, making it up to you to make sure the information the credit bureaus have added to your credit reports is a fair representation of your credit worthiness.
Many miss this concept. They get caught up on the narrow definition of inaccurate reporting and can’t see the broader concept of fairness that the Act is truly about. They continue to preach that consumers are only able to dispute items that are patently inaccurate even though years of case law have expanded the definition of inaccurate negative items to also include items that are untimely, misleading, incomplete, ambiguous, unverifiable, biased or unclear (collectively known as “questionable” items).
Your credit score is based on the data recorded in your credit file. If you do not feel this score is a fair representation of your true credit worthiness, it is your privilege and your responsibility to work to remedy this. Disputing the questionable negative items in your credit reports with the credit bureaus is the method made available by the Fair Credit Reporting Act for you to enforce your right to fair credit reporting.
About the Author
Lexington Law helps clients dispute the questionable negative listings in their credit reports as well as providing additional credit repair services extending beyond credit bureau disputes. In 2008, Lexington Law’s clients saw over 600,000 negative items removed from their credit reports.
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