KAT asked:


I recently (about 10 days ago) sent each bureau a letter disputing some accounts and inquiries on my report. I use Score Watch to monitor my score and yesterday I got an alert stating that info on my report had changed and my score dropped 20 points. The change in my report was the disputed items noted that the consumer was disputing validity. Can I argue this decrease with the credit bureau? And if so, how? I didn’t think I could be penalized for submitting dispute letters.

JASON

Tristan Dunston asked:


A credit report is information sent to private credit checking firms, typically by banks, lenders, utility companies, telecoms and internet suppliers about how customers manage their accounts with them. This information is then used by other banks, lenders, utility companies, etc to decide if potential customers are an acceptable risk when it comes to granting credit.

Consumers can get a free copy of their credit reports by writing to the credit checking firms. They can expect to receive a response within 10 days of writing.

Credit reports include personal information that includes name, address, date-of-birth, employment and drivers’ license details to help lenders confirm the identity of potential customers. Records from public sources such as bankruptcy and judgments may also appear on a consumers’ credit report.

A credit report will also tell lenders when an applicant has defaulted on any contracts where payment was deferred for more than a week. For the default to be listed with the credit checking firm, the payment has to have been more than 60 days late and action needs to have been taken to recover the debt. This includes paid up credit defaults, which should be recorded as settled.

Credit applications made by consumers will appear on their credit file, along with serious credit infringements – where a bank believes there to be strong evidence of fraud, such as when someone moves home to avoid paying their debts.

The length of time a listing will stay on a credit record varies depending on the type of information concerned. Credit applications, defaults and court judgments remain on record for 5 years. More serious listings, such as bankruptcy orders or serious credit infringements will be recorded for 7 years.

The companies who compile credit reports in Australia are Veda Advantage, Dun and Bradstreet and the Tasmanian Collection Service who hold records about Tasmanians. Veda Advantage can be contacted at: Veda Advantage Public Access, PO Box 964, North Sydney NSW 2059. Dun and Bradstreet at Public Access Centre, Dun and Bradstreet (Australia) PL, PO box 7405, St Kilda Road, VIC 3004. Tasmanian Collection Service can be contacted at GPO Box 814H, Hobart, TAS 7001.

Consumers can have errors fixed by writing to the relevant credit provider and credit reference agency. The Federal Privacy Commissioner is the agency to contact if a consumer is having difficulties getting an error fixed. The FPC can be contacted at GPO Box 5218, Sydney NSW 2001. Examples of errors that can occur are misspellings of names and addresses, identity theft, listing of debts that don’t belong to individual consumers, and defaults where the overdue payment period was less than 60 days.

Veda Advantage is the biggest credit reference agency in Australia with records on around 14 million Australians, followed by Dun and Bradstreet and the Tasmanian Collection Service.

Consumers often check their credit report for the first time when they are refused credit. This can happen because they have failed to repay a debt or they have had their identity stolen.

Australian credit reports are much different to those in the UK and US. In Australia reports are only allowed to show payment performance information once things have gone wrong. In the US and UK, lenders share payment performance histories with the credit checking firms on a monthly basis. This type of credit report information is sometimes referred to as ‘positive’ data, with the Australian default model sometimes being referred to as ‘negative’ data.



DEREK

PlasticTrees asked:


Does it sound like they’re hiring everyone, as long as they’re not idiots? It sounds like they plan to hire me if I have to bring my ID, right?

Should I worry if they’ll ask for a consumer background check (credit report)? My credit is horrible and I’ve been turned down for jobs because of it.

It’s a telemarketing job that works with people and their accounts.

SHERMAN

kc asked:


I am going line by line through my credit report as I hope to buy a house next year. I am confused about several things, one of which I will ask here
I have a credit card listed; here is what it says about it.
Date opened: 07/1998
Date Reported: 09/2000
Date of last activity: 10/1999
Current status: Pays as agreed
High Credit: $2,000
Credit limit: $0
Comments: Account closed at consumers request

From this information, should this have already been removed or should it be removed soon? Do I even want it to be removed as there is not bad information listed (except that I closed it).

I have another card on here with pretty much the same information except it was closed by the credit grantor although I did eventually pay it off. Should this be taken off after five years? Would I want it to be? Closed by the credit grantor is bad but is closed by the creditor bad…or neutral?

Thanks for your help! This stuff is very confusing : /

BRENDAN

16521448 asked:


Medical debt should be covered by insurance and is currently under investigation with medical facility. In the meantime, debt was purchased by a collection agency who now is calling repeatedly demanding payment. I’ve disputed with credit bureaus and with collection agency, but they are now threatening legal action. What else can I do?

COY

Adrian R asked:


We have have a small automobile dealership and do our own financing. The problem with that is we sometimes finance to people we have no history with. We are looking for consumer credit report service. Something we can subscribe to without paying large fees. Does anyone have an idea?

STACY

Samian’s Sixth Account asked:


I’m a twenty year-old college student who applied at Chase Bank for my first credit card, along with opening a free checking account, last week. My card was supposed to come in the mail, but instead I got a letter that said this:

“After reviewing the information provided in your application and your credit bureau report, we regret that we are unable to approve your request for a credit account at this time. The reason(s) for our decision are as follows:

Few revolving accounts opened long enough to establish credit history
Not enough accounts opened long enough to establish a credit history

Our credit decision was based in whole or in part on information obtained in a report from the consumer reporting agency listed below. The reporting agency did not make the credit decision and is unable to provide you with the specific reasons for our decision.”

What on earth did I do wrong?!
How can I have bad credit when I’ve never even applied for a credit card in my life?!

GERRY

Chane Steiner asked:


Collection accounts are typically seriously past due accounts that have been assigned to an attorney or collection agency. A collection agency is usually hired after a company has made multiple attempts to collect money that they believe is owed to them. Collection accounts can remain on your credit report for 7 years from the date of the initial missed payment that led to the collection (the original delinquency date). The following techniques will teach you how to remove collections from your credit reports.

What the Credit Bureaus Don’t Want You to Know:

1. A study released by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group in June 2004 found that 79% of the consumer credit reports surveyed contained some kind of error or mistake.

2. Once you dispute an account, it must be proven or it cannot remain on your report. If the credit bureau cannot verify the item when investigated, it must be removed from your file whether or not it’s true.

3. Every negative item on your report can be denied or challenged at any time. The credit bureau must re-investigate every time it is challenged and if the item cannot be verified within a “reasonable amount of time”, it must be removed from the file.

4. Many times the creditor does not re-verify in time or the credit bureau is busy and does not handle your dispute properly. It must then be deleted.

5. The older an item, the more difficult it is to verify. Creditors seldomly keep records for longer than a couple years.

Steps to Repair Your Credit:

1. Obtain your three credit reports.

2. Review the reports and locate the negative items.

3. Dispute the negative items with the credit bureaus.



MARION

Jon Arnold asked:


Is there really bogus information in my credit report? Chances are that you are amongst the more than 85% of consumers and businesses where their credit report contains errors. What? Doesn’t anybody watch over this or police it? The simple answer is no. The attitude of the credit bureaus is that “we don’t make the news, we just report it” and they take zero responsibility for the ACCURACY of that information, they just report it as if it were fact.

How does this happen? Let’s backup a few steps first so we can understand why this is the case and then we can talk about your responsibilities. First of all, there are three major credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion), and chances are very high that all three of them have a DIFFERENT credit report on you or your business. The result is that when you apply for a line of credit or a loan, the credit score reported back will be different from each credit bureau, and could be different enough to where you would be approved if they got your credit report from credit bureau “A” instead of credit bureau “B” or “C”.

Keep in mind that reporting credit is a business, and like any business, the rates charged to companies who report on their consumer and business loans is different. So say that two years ago your Visa company was reporting to Equifax, but this year they switched and are now report to Experian because Experian gives them better rates. It happens every day, this is just basic business. But the downside is that the records that Equifax was keeping on you are no longer being updated.

Now take that fact into consideration coupled with the fact that say every consumer has just 10 accounts that are either currently active or had been active at one time in the past 10 years. (And 10 is a very conservative number!) Now multiply the number of consumers (hundreds of millions) by 10 accounts each, and you end up with literally BILLIONS of records that the credit bureaus need to keep track of. It can be a database administrator’s worst nightmare.

So what you end up with is accounts that you paid off years ago still showing as having a balance due, accounts showing past due when you have not ever been late with a payment, and particularly if you have a common name, you end up with accounts showing up that you don’t even know about! All of these errors together comprise your ultimate credit score, which is almost certainly lower than it should be.

So what can you do about this? You can do plenty and you should start yesterday. Get a copy of your credit report from each of the three credit bureaus and then go over each and every piece of information there with a fine tooth comb. When (almost certainly not “if”) you find something inaccurate, it is your responsibility to dispute that item with the credit bureau. That is the ONLY way it will get corrected. The burden of proof is on the credit bureau to prove that their reported information is correct, and they do this by contacting the creditor and asking for verification, based on your dispute. If the creditor does not respond, the information must be removed from your credit report. If the creditor responds that it is accurate, then you have a beef with that creditor and need to contact them to get their report corrected.

The key point is that your credit report affects virtually every aspect of your life, and you need to ensure that the information there is accurate and reflects you in as good a light as possible. It is YOUR responsibility to get this done, nobody is watching over your shoulder to ensure your information is accurate.



HENRY

somebody asked:


in my equifax credit report they put 3 times concumer interview..does it affect my credit score by 60 points in just two months?

EMERY