Disputing Items on Your Credit Report

I hope you keep tabs on your credit report by looking at it every year for free on annualcreditreport.com, as well as on an ongoing basis by using sites such as creditkarma or credit sesame. If so, you might find that not all the information on your report may be correct, so what should you do?

First, recall that your credit report contains information about your various accounts that does have an effect on your credit score as well as personal information that does not have an effect on your credit score. You can dispute anything on your credit report, whether it’s an inaccurate name or an account that you don’t recognize.

Fortunately, most of the online sites for credit monitoring and credit reporting tend to make it easy to dispute items. Typically, it’s as easy as filling out a short form. The response isn’t immediate, because someone needs to investigate your request. This investigation may involve contacting the parties involved, including the company the account is with, and you might have to provide supporting documentation. Do note that since there are three credit reporting agencies, you might have to dispute the item for each agency.

In addition to contacting the credit-reporting agencies regarding incorrect information, you may want to contact the company reporting the incorrect information. For example, if your credit-card company is reporting that all of your payments are late to all three credit reporting agencies, it’s a good idea to work with the credit-card company to resolve the issue, so that it gets fixed and doesn’t occur again.

One of the most common and useful items to dispute is a derogatory mark, such as from a collection agency. You have nothing to lose by disputing these. With collection agencies, for example, they must provide evidence that the debt owed is valid and it belongs to you. If they don’t reply in a timely manner to the credit-reporting agency or provide sufficient evidence, the item is removed from your credit report. In a future post, I’ll describe in more detail how to deal with collection agencies and how some methods can lead to a better credit score than others.

In rare cases, items may appear on your credit report that aren’t hurting you and you’ll have to decide whether or not to dispute them. It’s not uncommon that parents add their children as authorized users when they’re very young, helping to build their credit score for when they grow up. A relative of mine has an account that’s five years older than she is on one of her credit reports. Her score from that reporting agency is noticeably higher than the other two reports.

If you notice older accounts on your report that you don’t recognize, but they have low utilization and a good payment history, you’ll have to think twice about disputing it. It might be time to ask your parents if they know anything about it, though!

Please note that if you believe or know that you’re a victim of identity theft, simply disputing items on your credit report might not be enough. In future posts, I’ll discuss identity theft, how it impacts your credit, and what you can do to combat it.

As a final note, this website from the government provides some additional useful information regarding disputing items on your credit report: consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0151-disputing-errors-credit-reports.