Free Credit Report

The process of Credit Repair is laborious and is not easy, but you need to do it for your sound financial health. A bad credit score or a report can adversely affect your ability to seek financial products such as loans, credit cards and the like. You miss a payment here, pile up some debts elsewhere, and suddenly find things getting out of control.

A bad credit score stops you from obtaining further loans, financial help or credit cards, or else you get these by paying exorbitant interest rates. Everyone needs credit at some time or the other, and the faster you arrange for credit repairs, the better for you.

The following steps will guide you to repair your credit yourself:

*Get Credit Reports - Contact the three major credit bureaus - Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion - and obtain your credit reports from them. All three reports may not be the same, but will indicate errors of omissions, misreporting, misinformation, or misinterpretation. Peruse the reports carefully and note all the errors you find. There may be credits you have cleared but have not yet appeared in the reports. There may be factual errors, or accounts you have not opened.

*Contact the Credit Bureaus - For fraudulent accounts that do not belong to you, contact the credit bureaus and lodge a complaint. These accounts need to be removed from your credit report.

*Contact Creditors - Your report may have negative comments from your creditors, or may still be showing debts you have already cleared. Contact your creditors to have this sorted out. Never give up communicating with your creditor. Sometimes a phone call is enough to reverse an anomaly. The negative comments may be true and if at present your account is in a good state, talking to your creditor can help to remove this. Fewer the negative comments on your report, the better it is for you.

If the creditor is being extra difficult about a negative comment, or a debt, that should not be there, and you can back up your case with documents, you may have to file a dispute.

*Reduce Your Debts - Check the total debts you have. Too much debt can affect your credit rating. Creditors will be leery of granting you credit lines or extra loans. Too much debt does not speak well of your financial health, and you may have to pay higher rates of interest. Work out ways to reduce your debts, by paying off the debts with higher interest rates first.

Credit repairs will take time and effort, but you need to start immediately.

Learn more about finance and debt control at: Quick Loan Companies and Articles Needed On Finance

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Millions of Americans have sought and received a free credit report under the FACT Act amendments to the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

While there are a ton of online sites offering ‘free’ credit reports, there are really only three major credit reporting companies: Equifax, Experian (which used to be TRW) and TransUnion.

If you go to one of their sites ( www.experian.com, www.equifax.com, www.transunion.com ). You’ll quickly discover that the “free” report they offer directly requires you to sign up, using a credit card, for a monthly service.

These monthly services offer you thirty days free - but you absolutely must remember to cancel your membership before the 30 days end or you will be charged.

Each site also contains information about how to obtain an actual free report. This information, which is basically identical on all three sites, states the following: Under Federal law, you have the right to receive a free copy of your credit report once every 12 months from each of the three nationwide consumer reporting companies. To request your free annual report under that law, go to www.annualcreditreport.com.

I thought that was very interesting and went to check out the process. Oddly enough when I went to that site, I got an error page and the following message:

“The page cannot be found

The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.”

This is not a default server/browser error page. The URL for it is: https://www.annualcreditreport.com/notfound.htm

I went and checked Google and their last saved copy of the ‘real’ page was from April 28, 2006. I was unable to find any indication of why the page has been removed, but at least at the moment you have no access to this page despite the fact that it is essentially mandated by Federal law. Of course, I’m not a lawyer and it’s not entirely clear to me exactly what agreements underlie the creation of this site, but the Federal Trade Commission pages link to this site. Somebody created that notfound.htm and it seems to me they really should have provided an explanation of why our access to the real free online credit reports is being denied - even if it is just temporary.

The following information is part of what was on that site according to the copy stored on Google from 04/28/2006:

” You may request your free credit report online, by phone or through the mail. Free credit reports requested online are viewable immediately upon authentication of identity. Free credit reports requested by phone or mail will be processed within 15 days of receiving your request.

This central site allows you to request a free credit file disclosure, commonly called a credit report, once every 12 months from each of the nationwide consumer credit reporting companies: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.

AnnualCreditReport.com is the official site to help consumers to obtain their free credit report.”

Now that would all be very nice - if it were accessible. Hopefully it will have become accessible again by the time you are reading this.

If not, here is the information from the FTC on how to get your free credit report:

“You can order your free annual credit report online at annualcreditreport.com, by calling 1-877-322-8228, or by completing the Annual Credit Report Request Form and mailing it to: Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281. When you order, you need to provide your name, address, Social Security number, and date of birth. To verify your identity, you may need to provide some information that only you would know, like the amount of your monthly mortgage payment.”

While supposedly you can request a free report on the companies websites, I failed to find a way to do that without signing up for their monthly service and then canceling before the free 30 days were over. You could try calling them, however, to request a free report:

Experian at 888-397-3742, Equifax at 1-800-685-1111 or TransUnion at 800-888-4213

Using annualcreditreport.com or mailing an Annual Credit Report Request Form to the Annual Credit Report Request Service, you can request reports from one or all three credit reporting companies. With any other ‘free’ option for accessing your credit reports, you need to sign up with all three companies or pay for an additional service that will provide all three reports.

Check this page at the FTC for more information and a link to a PDF copy of the annual request form which you can download, print and then mail:

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/credit/ycr_free_reports.htm

If you’re in a hurry and need your report fast, your best bet will be to go directly to one (or all) of the 3 sites above and go ahead and sign-up. You will need to give them a credit card and more personal information than you might like, but they no doubt have much more extensive information about you on file already. Going to any other site (than one of these three) means you will be sharing your information in places you really don’t need to. You also potentially could end up on a fraudulent or imposter site.

When you go to a site use a valid link from the FTC or type the address in yourself. When you arrive, verify the address. Identity theft does happen so the extra effort involved in being sure about what you’re doing is critically important.

If, for some reason, you need to track your credit reporting history closely, you could request your free reports individually, spreading your requests over the year. While the information may vary from one company to another, spreading out the requests does give you the ability to check more frequently without having to buy reports or maintain a membership at one or more of the credit reporting agencies.

An excellent beginning point is to read the full FTC publication “Your Access to Free Credit Reports” which you can see at:

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/freereports.htm

So, no, you don’t need a credit card to get your free credit report. However, as I write this, it’s not possible to do it online without a credit card. The annualcreditreport.com website should eventually be up and operating again, sometime, so before you pay or use a credit card to get a free report, check that site and see if it’s back in business. And while it’s a little more time consuming and you’ll need to wait to receive your reports, you can always use the mail or call (1-877-322-8228) to get your free reports from the Annual Credit Report Request Service.

Be smart, don’t pay for something you don’t need. If you signup for a 30 day free membership to get your free report, cancel it as soon as you have your report. These companies are required by law to provide a free annual credit report. But, on their own websites, they’re smart enough to offer the free report as bait for a membership. This lets them squeeze some extra bucks out of a legal requirement when people forget to cancel within the 30 days limit. Plus they also offer a variety of other, more expensive, credit report plans that sound enticing but which very very few people really need.

Copyright 2006 Richard Keir

Further information on credit cards and credit reports can be found at http://credit-paths.com/ plus more on student credit cards and debt consolidation.

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You can get an annual free credit report from any of the three major credit bureaus. If you have ever had credit, then there is a report on your borrowing and repaying at one of these bureaus - maybe all three. The Fair Credit Reporting Act is a law saying that every person is entitled to receive one annual free credit report once every twelve months from the credit bureaus.

Annual credit reports are very important because they contain all of the information about your credit history - not just for the past year, but for at least 7 years. When you request an annual free credit report, the credit bureau is not allowed to charge you for the first report. However, if you request more than one report, then you have to pay for the others.

There are many sites on the Internet that will charge you for a credit report. Therefore it is important to know that you do not have to pay for this service. By analyzing your annual free credit report once a year, you will have a clear idea of what your credit score is. Free annual credit reports will help you determine where your focus for the next year should be if you are looking to repair any bad credit items that appear on your report.

If you have been denied credit and you think that it is unreasonable, then it would be in your best interest to request a free annual credit report. This is because with the amount of scams that exist, someone could be using your name to receive credit and then giving you a bad rating. If you are working on repairing bad credit that you have, an annual free credit report is enough to request. Credit scores do not raise overnight or because you made one payment on time. It takes at least a year to notice a marked increase, so you shouldn’t pay for extra reports.

When you receive your annual free credit report, you should carefully read all sections. All aspects of the credit report are included in computing a credit score, so you should pay attention to all of them. Check your address to make sure it is correct and compare the list of accounts to ensure that you have not missed any payments. The annual free credit report also contains a list of people or businesses that have requested credit information on you recently. You should also check this to see that all of these names are familiar to you.

You don’t need to pay, you can get an annual free credit report.

To download a free copy of Peter’s Credit Repair book visit Peter’s Website Credit Repair Answers and find out about Credit Bureaus and more; including Credit Repair Services, Free Credit Reports, and Online Credit Repair.

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