How to Deal With Credit Reporting Agencies

Credit Reporting Agencies control most of credit information on most of the people and businesses in North America and in most parts of the developed world. Access to good (low) interest rates to borrow money, access to credit for purchasing even access to insurance all depend on having and maintaining a good credit report. Maintaining good communication and rapport with credit reporting agencies is therefore in your best interest.

Instructions

1

Review your credit reports with all the companies who have them on you.

If you are an individual you will just need to check with the three main personal or retail credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.

If you are a business you will want to get your Dun & Bradstreet report as well

You are reviewing the information to make sure that it is accurate. If you find inaccuracies you want to communicate with the reporting agency right away.

2

Gather your information to prove your contention that their report is inaccurate before you contact the agency.

Your record of payment or bill of sale or returned credit will be needed at some point to prove their report is not correct.

3

Contact the credit reporting company involved to let the company know that some information is inaccurate.

The company reporting is merely reporting the information received and is not doing anything out of spite.

Be polite in your contact and throughout the process (either in emails, telephone or letters) because you want the company to take quick action to fix this to help YOU.

You also want to see from the report which of your current (or past) creditors has reported you to the credit reporting agency as a problem and contact them as well.

The company reporting you can fix the problem as fast or faster than the credit reporting company can.

4

Re-order your credit report in one month to make certain the information you wanted corrected has been updated and/or removed.

The credit reporting agency can send you the updated report as well as part of the updating process but you may want to take this step to ensure that the report has been fixed to your satisfaction.

5

Save all your correspondence regarding this problem in a special credit file.

The reason is because you might have to do the same thing again with another credit reporting agency.

The agencies do not have all the same people reporting to them about you all the time. They sign up new companies and lose others sometimes so this dispute or problem may resurface at some point.