Just as the name suggests the FCRA aims to protect you from unfair, misleading or inaccurate information being included in your credit reports.
FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act)
The FCRA is important to us Americans and that is why this law is crucial for you to understand and learn.The FCRA regulates how the “credit bureaus” treat consumers. The law also compels “credit bureaus” to provide consumer information to third parties, all the while safeguarding the consumer’s right of confidentiality. It’s not as good and safe as you might think though. Anyone who has permission to view your credit sees a lot of information…
Your credit report and everything on it can be submitted to your employers, creditors and insurers, who may take negative action towards you. You might not even realize what you’re giving permission for these people to view, but they will see lots of things about you that you might wish they weren’t able to.
If so, they must disclose the source of the negative information so that you can verify or dispute that information in question. Luckily the intentional submission of inaccurate information by creditors is prohibited by the FCRA.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) controls the use of credit reports and requires consumer reporting agencies to maintain complete and accurate information on your credit reports. It also gives you the right to review and correct errors on your credit reports.
Issuing Credit Reports – Credit bureaus are required to help you with understanding your credit reports and can only issue your credit reports and personal information to those who have a legitimate reason (permissible purposes) to request your credit information.
Credit Report Errors – The “credit bureaus” are also responsible under the FCRA for responding to you in a timely manner to change or remove incorrect data.
Denied Credit – If you’ve been denied credit, the lender must give you the name and address of the creditor that issued the report (they rarely do). Then you can request your free credit report within that 30 day window of being denied. (so do it right away if this happens)
Disclosure – Reporting agencies must give you access to the information on your credit report and identify anyone who has recently requested your credit information (credit inquiry).
The FCRA also details how the “credit bureaus” have to handle your disputes.
When you dispute an item, the “credit bureau” has to put a note in the account that it is under dispute (but the “credit bureaus” rarely do). The “credit bureau” then has 30 days to investigate and come to a conclusion. They have 45 days if you received your report from www.annualcreditreport.com. Once they come to a conclusion, the FCRA mandates the “Credit Bureau” notify the consumer of what action was taken.
As you can see, the FCRA can help you tremendously to get you the clean credit report you deserve!
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