Nobody's Perfect
If your life is sailing smoothly and you’ve never been turned down
for credit, you may think you have no reason to check your credit report.
But, even if you’re doing fine, your report may contain errors.
In June 2004, U.S. PIRG, the national lobbying office for state Public Interest
Research Groups, released a survey that stated, “One in four credit
reports contains errors serious enough to cause consumers to be denied credit,
a loan, an apartment or home loan or even a job.”
And other experts point out that nearly every American will find an error
on at least one of his or her credit reports.
According to the U.S. PIRG survey:
- 25 percent of the credit reports contained errors serious enough to result
in the denial of credit;
- 79 percent of the credit reports contained mistakes of some kind;
- 54 percent of the credit reports contained personal identifying information
that was misspelled, long-outdated, belonged to a stranger, or was otherwise
incorrect; and
- 30 percent of the credit reports contained credit accounts that had been
closed by the consumer but incorrectly remained listed as open.
Errors wind up on your credit report simply because the consumer reporting
agencies collect information from all kinds of creditors, but they don’t
verify that information.
According to Fair, Isaac & Co., the most common mistakes on credit reports
happen because:
- people apply for credit under different names (for example, Robert Allen
and Bob Allen);
- the person who input the information had trouble reading a handwritten
application;
- someone made a typo or other clerical error while inputting the information;
- someone provided an inaccurate Social Security number; or
- payments were posted to the wrong account, accidentally.
The only person who will verify the accuracy of your credit reports is you.
Next: Fixing Mistakes |
