44 KIPLINGER’S PERSONAL FINANCE^ 10/2019MONEY
settlement, see “Ahead,” on page 11.)
“More needs to be done to rein in the
bureaus.”CLEAR ERRORS FROM
YOUR CREDIT REPORT
You may have discovered that some-
thing was amiss when you were
un expectedly rejected for credit or
received notice of a change from a
credit-monitoring service. Rather than
wait for a surprise, make it a habit to
regularly visit http://www.annualcredit
report.com, where you can collect one
free report from each bureau every
12 months. Review your reports to
ensure that all of the accounts are
yours. Check that any accounts you’ve
closed are marked as such (accounts
in good standing continue to appear
on your reports for about 10 years af-
ter they’re shut down) and that details
such as balances, credit limits and
dates that accounts were opened are
correct. Make sure your personal in-
formation is accurate, too. An incor-
rect address, for example, could be a
sign of a mixed file or identity theft.
If your credit report shows informa-
tion that is inaccurate or incomplete,
you have the right to dispute it and
have it corrected or deleted. Fixing an
error is especially important if it could
prevent you from getting credit (or re-
sult in a higher interest rate on a loan),
renting a home or getting a job. A new
collection account that mistakenly ap-
pears in your name, for example, will
likely cause your credit score to drop
significantly.
Errors crop up for a variety of rea-
sons. A lender or other furnisher of in-
formation may tell the credit bureaus
that you’ve missed payments when
you haven’t or provide an incorrect
balance for your account. Or a bureau
may continue to report a delinquency
after it should have been removed
from your credit file (by law, negative
information must disappear after
seven years—except for bankruptcies,
which may remain for 10 years).
Another possible problem—one that
can be vexing to resolve—is that yourcredit file is mixed with that of some-
one else who has the same name or
other similarities to your identifying
information. It’s especially likely to
happen if you have a common first and
last name or if you have a family mem-
ber with the same name. Plus, when
matching information from furnishers
to consumers’ credit reports, the
credit bureaus may consider only
seven of a Social Security number’s
nine digits.Make your case. If you spot an error,
attack it from both sides: Contact the
furnisher that provided the data to the
credit bureaus as well as each bureau
reporting the error. The furnisher’s
contact information may appear on
your credit report. Be persistent—you
may have to ask for a supervisor or
talk to representatives from a few
different departments before you find
someone who can help. If the furnisher
agrees to fix a mistake, confirm that
it will update all the credit bureaus
(which it must do) and ask for written
acknowledgment.
Because the credit bureaus still
often shift a complaint to the data fur-
nisher and regurgitate its response,
convincing the furnisher that it made
a mistake may be your best bet to get
an error off of your report. A couple of
years ago, Mike Gnitecki of Longview,
Texas, noticed that his credit score,
which typically tops an excellent 800,
had dropped. After checking his credit
reports, he found that payment on a
line of credit was being reported as 30
days overdue. A bank representative
told him that its records showed no
late payments, so he filed a dispute
online with each credit bureau.
A month passed with no word from
the bureaus, says Gnitecki. He then
showed his credit report to bank rep-
resentatives, who concluded that there
had been a glitch. The bank fixed it,
and the delinquency stopped showing
up on his reports. But the process left
him less than impressed with the
credit bureaus. “It was a frustrating
experience. They make it sound likethe process is easy. It’s not,” says
Gnitecki. “You get the impression that
nobody cares.”
Still, it’s wise to file a dispute with
the credit bureaus even as you com-
municate with the furnisher. That pre-
serves your right to make a legal claim
against the data furnisher or bureau
if the error isn’t corrected. And the
bureaus must investigate a dispute,
generally within 30 days, unless they
consider it frivolous. A dispute may
be deemed frivolous if it comes from
a credit-repair company or if it’s a