In my book, How To Be Smart, Successful, And Organized With Your Money, I devote an entire chapter to credit. I spent so much time on it because credit is such an important part of our lives; everything from getting a mortgage (or even getting approved for a lease), to buying the safest car for your family are dependent, for most us, on your credit score.
Unfortunately, mistakes happen—and in the case of credit reporting, they happen a lot:
40 million people have pretty serious mistakes on their credit report. In fact, one out of every five errors on people’s credit reports adversely affect their credit scores. Credit reporting agencies have an obligation to fix these errors, but they don’t.
So what are some of their most common errors?
– Paid bills that are showing as delinquent
– Open accounts that are listed as closed
– Mistakes due to similar names and Social Security numbers
When mistakes are made by any one of the three reporting agencies (Equifax, Transunion, and Experian), they are exceedingly difficult to fix:
A woman had a name mix up on her report and, as a result, she was not able to refinance her home, or get a car — or even sign her children’s student loans. She even went so far as to contact her alleged creditors, who affirmed that she was not the debtor they were seeking. None of this mattered to the reporting agency. She ended up suing the credit reporting agency and she won, but her justice was extremely delayed.
It seems that the credit agencies are simply not configured to have a strong customer service component. In fact, some people would say that you and I are not their customers, but the banks and credit card companies are.
Read more about credit and other topics in my book, available here on Amazon!
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