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How to Dispute a Credit Report

By: EconomyWatch Date: 25 August 2009

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Credit report disputes can be filed by individuals to the concerned credit bureau(s) if their credit reports contain incomplete, incorrect or outdated information. Such an error should be rectified as it could affect your credit ratings drastically and impede your chances of acquiring external credit.

The credit report disputes filed by individuals are governed by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). This act establishes a mandate for credit bureaus to initiate investigation and collect evidence on the individual’s request.

How to Dispute a Credit Report

The basic steps involved in filing credit report disputes are:

Evaluate credit reports: Acquire your credit report from all three major credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Bear in mind that the content of these reports may differ from one another. Review each of them carefully to look for deviations and highlight errors. These errors could be very critical, such as including credit information of another individual or minor or simply omitting updated information.

Write and file a credit report dispute: Irrespective of the nature of error, it must be disputed to the bureau as soon as it is identified. For this, you must draw up a formal letter and mail it to the credit bureaus, besides submitting the online dispute form. You must attach a marked credit report copy along with evidentiary documents such as copies of account statements and communication records to speed up the investigation.

Contact creditors: In certain cases, such as identity theft and fraud, you must contact a creditor before you contact the bureau to file a dispute letter. If this dispute is settled, the creditor will automatically update the credit bureaus about the development.

Follow up: The credit bureaus will take at least 30 days to verify the information and notify the results. Ask for a new credit report copy to ensure that the necessary errors have been corrected. You could also ask the credit bureaus to notify the changes to parties who received a copy of the incorrect credit report in the past six months.

If you feel uncomfortable about handling your credit report disputes by yourself, there are various non-profit companies to help you deal with the same. You could also consider hiring a paid professional to help you in identifying errors and guiding you through the entire dispute resolving process.