Credit Report Mistakes

Mistakes on your credit report are more common than you think; research conducted by US Public Information Research Group US PIRG, Washington, D.C. finds that:

TWENTY-NINE PERCENT (29%) of credit reports contain serious errors, false delinquencies, or accounts that did not belong to the consumer.

FORTY-ONE PERCENT (41%) of credit reports contain demographic information that was misspelled, outdated or incorrect.

TWENTY PERCENT (20%) of credit reports were missing major credit, loan, mortgage or other information to demonstrate the credit worthiness of the consumer.

TWENTY-SIX PERCENT (26%) of credit reports contain accounts that were closed by the consumer but incorrectly listed as open (or) “closed by credit granter”.

SEVENTY PERCENT (70%) of credit reports overall contain errors or mistakes.

It makes sense to ensure that all information is current and completely accurate. It’s you who pays for mistakes on your credit reports.

When a credit report contains errors, it is often because the report is incomplete, or contains information about someone else. This typically happens because:

  • The person applied for credit under different names (e.g. Robert Jones, Bob Jones, etc.).
  • Someone made a clerical error in reading or entering name or address information from a hand-written application.
  • The person gave an inaccurate Social Security number, or the number was misread by the lender.
  • Loan or credit card payments were inadvertently applied to the wrong account.

Did you know?……

Closing out accounts in good standing actually hinders your credit scores and will not help you during the rebuilding process.