Consumer Credit Reports – equifax experian score

W. M. Blake asked:




Your credit report can have a great deal of impact on your purchases and other financial transactions. Purchasing a new home, qualifying for loans, buying a car, applying for credit cards – even getting an education can be affected by your credit.

When you’re looking for any kind of loan or financing, your credit status will play a big part in how good (or bad) of a deal you’ll get. The better your credit report, the better rate you’ll get. Of course, the opposite is just as true – to the point where bad credit might prevent you from getting financing at all.

Your credit report includes a score that indicates how creditworthy you are – how much of a risk you’ll be, to look at it from the lender’s point of view. This score is determined by your financial history – do you make payments on time, have you missed payments, have you ever declared bankruptcy, etc.

The FTC mandates that all consumers are entitled to one free credit report each year. This gives you the opportunity to review your report for errors and correct any mistakes that you might find. This free credit report can be obtained online at no cost to you. There are many services and websites that offer credit reports, but often for a fee.

Your credit report includes information such as your place of employment, birthday, a list of all your creditors, credit applications (approved or not), foreclosures and bankruptcies.

This information comes from a variety of sources, so there is always a chance an error can find its way onto your report. Reviewing your report annually will help to ensure that these errors are caught and can be corrected to keep your credit report clean.

Wilma

Kyle Sugerak asked:




A growing number of consumers need credit repair services, even if they live in Minneapolis.

Experian, one of the three national credit bureaus, recently released its State of Credit report, in which it highlighted the average Vantage credit scores across the nation. The Vantage credit score, along with the more popular FICO credit score, is used by mortgage lenders and financial institutions to judge the creditworthiness of borrowers. Those borrowers with low credit scores, caused by missed payments, bankruptcies, and other financial missteps, will struggle to obtain loans at solid interest rates.

The residents of Minneapolis, with an average Vantage credit score of 787, topped the Experian list. Midwest cities, in fact, scored well: The residents of Madison, Wis., had an average Vantage score of 785, coming in second place.

Overall, though, most U.S. cities had Vantage credit scores that received grades of “C” or lower.

Falling Credit Scores

Another recent study, this one done by FICO, the largest provider of credit scores in the country, showed that the recession and its slow recovery has taken a toll on consumers and their credit.

The FICO study reported that nearly 25 percent of consumers had FICO credit rating under 600. Such a low score qualifies as a terrible one, and borrowers will struggle to earn approval for most loans from conventional lenders with such a weak score. Lenders of all type, whether they are passing out mortgage, auto, or personal loans, are taking a closer look at borrowers’ credit scores. They’ve learned important lessons during the Great Recession and its aftermath: It’s important to lend only to those consumers whose credit scores demonstrate that they have a history of paying their bills on time.

Banks and mortgage lenders have received significant criticism for their actions during the boom times, when they lent generous amounts of money to borrowers even if they had low credit scores, shaky employment histories, and high levels of debt.

Today, lenders and banks are more cautious when it comes to passing out money. Consumers need strong credit scores – and in many cases the help of credit repair services – to qualify for the best loans today.

Credit Repair Services

Plenty of companies offer credit repair help – but not all of these companies are trustworthy. The ones to avoid are fairly easy to spot: They boast in late-night TV commercials that they can raise consumer credit rating by 100 points or more in days. They may also claim that they can legally remove bankruptcy filings or foreclosures from consumers’ credit reports.

The truth is that there is no way to legally remove a correctly filed bankruptcy or foreclosure mark from a credit report. These reports just have to fall off after a certain number of years, seven or 10 depending on the filing.

Credit Repair Help

The best credit repair services are those that will help consumers through the process of searching your three free credit reports – consumers can order each of their three credit reports at no charge every 12 months from AnnualCreditReport.com – for errors. Correcting errors, such as incorrectly reported missed payments or open credit card accounts that consumers actually closed – can boost consumers’ credit rating fairly quickly.

The top credit repair services also help consumers set up a monthly budget that will prevent them from missing their payments. They’ll also provide credit counseling services to help consumers determine the reasons for their overspending ways.

Consumers today can no longer afford to overlook their credit scores. Lenders of all types rely heavily on them when determining who gets money and at what interest rates. Those consumers who fail to tackle their credit problems will find that life can be awfully stressful.

Steven

Kyle Sugerak asked:




When people ask for my credit repair advice, I always start with one important piece of information: Consumers should never pay for free credit reports.

Surprisingly, many consumers do unwittingly pay for credit reports that should be free. Sites such as the misleadingly named FreeCreditReport.com have come under fire from consumers and their advocates for ads that critics say are misleading.

Visitors to FreeCreditReport.com can sign up to receive their three free credit reports – maintained by the credit bureaus Experian, Equifax and TransUnion – from the site. However, they’ll first have to provide their credit card information. They’ll then be signed up for a free trial of the site’s credit-monitoring service.

If these visitors forget to cancel the service after their free trial ends, they’ll find a $14.95 charge on their credit card statement. That charge will pop up again for every month in which they forget to cancel their subscription to the service.

Critics say that it would be far more honest to require consumers to give their consent to sign up for the service when the free trial ends. Of course, Experian, the company behind FreeCreditReport.com, would then not receive all those extra $14.95 payments.

Free Credit Reports Should be Free

My credit repair advice is to order your free credit reports instead from AnnualCreditReport.com. This site is maintained by the three credit bureaus. Under federal law, you can order one copy each of your three free credit reports from here once every 12 months. There are no charges to do so.

Once you receive your credit reports, you can then check them for any mistakes. This is the first step in the credit-repair process. You don’t want your credit reports to state that you missed three car payments in 2008 when you know that you made every payment on time. You don’t want it to say that you have 10 open lines of credit when you know that you’ve closed most of your open credit card accounts.

These mistakes can lower your credit score significantly. And today, it’s difficult to borrow any money from conventional mortgage lenders if you have a weak credit score.

Credit Repair Basics

If you’ve found errors, correct them in writing. This is inefficient, but it’s the only way the credit bureaus accept corrections.

Removing incorrectly filed negative information from your credit reports will boost your credit scores. But if you need to put in more work, you’ll have to go through two more steps.

First, pay all your monthly bills on time – never miss a payment or make a late payment. Both actions will cause your credit scores to suffer. Secondly, don’t run up your credit card debt. Lenders consider borrowers with high amounts of credit card debt to be credit risks. Set aside whatever money you can to pay down your outstanding credit card balances. The less credit card debt you have, the better it is for your credit scores.

And, of course, avoid filing for bankruptcy. Chapter 7 bankruptcy filings remain on your credit report for 10 years, while Chapter 13 ones stay there for seven. During this time, your score will certainly suffer.

Good Credit Repair News

The good news is that this credit repair advice is so easy to follow. Boosting credit scores really requires only that you act like a mature consumer.

• Don’t overspend
• Pay for your purchases with cash instead of running up credit card debt
• Pay your bills on time
• Eliminate as much debt as possible.

These are all tips that will help you live a less stressful life. It’s an added bonus that they’ll help you improve your credit scores, too.

Nicole

Rachel Altman asked:




Credit report repair is commonly referred to as the process of disputing negative items in a credit report. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, consumers have the right to request an investigation with the credit bureaus for any item on their credit report. The credit bureaus and the original furnisher of the information must investigate the claim within 30 days and report their results back to consumers.

It’s important to point out that the credit bureaus are for-profit organizations and possess no government affiliation. They profit off the sale of your private information and from selling your information to you. Only after the Federal Trade Commission came up with a set of regulations passed in 2003 were consumers able to receive one free credit report a year.

The FCRA also had to regulate how long negative information, such as late payments, bankruptcies, tax liens or judgments may stay on a consumer’s credit report. It’s typically seven years from the date of the delinquency. The exceptions: bankruptcies (10 years) and tax liens (seven years from the time they are paid). Unpaid tax liens can remain for up to 15 years. Although, 7 to 10 years is a long time to stay on a report, the credit bureaus would report it for much longer, if not forever, if it weren’t for the FTC stepping in.

When a consumer makes a dispute with the credit bureaus, the credit bureaus do not interact with information providers (typically creditors) directly. They use a system called E-Oscar. E-Oscar is an automated consumer dispute verification process. The credit bureaus demand that everyone who provides information to them be on this system. If you don’t get on the system, you CAN NOT provide information to a credit bureau.

The E-Oscar system allows credit grantors to resolve disputes in a timely manner; however the results are commonly inaccurate. In fact, a study by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group found that 79% of all credit reports contained errors. With E-Oscar the credit bureaus NEVER send the original creditor the information you provide them. Instead, an employee scans your letter along with hundreds of others.

The employee is given a very short amount of time to figure out what you are trying to dispute and then gives your dispute a code. It is then verified with E-Oscar. Any documentation that you sent which proves the information is erroneous or any information that you provided simply gets filed away, incase you should sue them. It’s rarely ever even looked at.

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