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Summary
Credit Reports frequently contain errors.
There have been studies that show more than
3 out of 5 consumers have negative information
in their credit report, and almost half of
the analyzed reports contained errors. Some
of the errors were serious enough to prevent
the individual from qualifying for credit.
Many reports contacin serious inaccuracies
like false delinquencies and judgments that
simply don't belong to the consumer.
FCRA Detail
In order to address
this issue, and provide an avenue to for consumers
to address these errors due to poor record
keeping on the part of the credit reporting
agencies, the US Congress passed the Fair
Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) in 1971. Since
the original law it has been revised and refined
several times, most recently in 1997. The
laws established by the FCRA requires the
credit bureaus to remove all obsolete, inaccurate,
irrelevant, outdated, misidentifying, incomplete,
incorrect, erroneous, and misleading information
from their credit reports.
Specifically, if the completeness
or accuracy of any item in a consumer's file
at a credit bureau is disputed, the bureau
must re-investigate free of charge and record
the current status of the disputed information,
or delete the item, before the end of the
30-day period beginning on the date on which
the agency receives the notice of dispute.
(For the free credit reports this duration
may be extended to 45-days.)
Additionally, the credit
bureau must promptly provide notification
of any dispute to anyone who provided any
item of information in dispute. If an item
is found to be inaccurate or incomplete or
cannot be verified, the credit bureau shall
promptly delete the item, or modify the item,
as appropriate, and notify the consumer no
later than 5 business days after the completion
of the re-investigation.
The credit bureau must
also provide the consumer with notice that
a description of the procedure used to determine
the accuracy, including the business name,
address and telephone number of any furnisher
of information, must be made available to
the consumer upon request. This description
of the re-investigation procedure must be
provided within 15 days of the request.
Continue
here to see what the FCRA says about how long
negative items can remain on your credit report.
Continue here to
see how the FCRA defines "permissible
purposes" for which consumer's credit
reports can be obtained by others.
More
Information
More details around the applicable laws can
be found at:
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