New Credit Report Legislation.

Published on February 28, 2005 By Kobrano In Current Events

I heard on the news today that there is some new legislation going through Washington that forces credit companies to provide an easy and FREE method for people to get their credit reports from each of the three agencies once a year. The website referred to on the news was:

https://www.annualcreditreport.com/
Link

I tried it, and it works great, and within minutes I had 3 credit reports FOR FREE (no strings attached). Good stuff.. Incase you don't know, there are three different agencies - Transunion, Equifax and Experian. Reports between the three can and do differ, and should be checked for accuracy at least once per year. I tend to check my every two years, and the last time I ran reports on my wife was around 2001 and for me I believe I did last year.

Since we are building a new house this year, I figured it would be a good time to check the "Accuracy" of our reports, and correct any issues.

My report wasn't bad, only 1-2 things were incorrect. It said I still worked for the National Security Agency, which is incorrect. It had a collection agency item on it that I have no clue of what it is, so I disputed that online to have it removed. Then I updated any personal information. My wifes report wasn't so lucky. Well over 10-12 discrepencies, everything from her personal information to her finances. As a family, we are 90% debt free, the only monthly reccurring payments (other than utilities, etc) we have is a car ($335 a month with 28 months left), I recently paid my car off in cash. However her report was filled with accounts showing as "Open" that have been closed for at least 1-2 years. I quickly disputed this, had them removed, and cleaned everything up nice and fresh.

Current FICA scores for me and my wife: Wife-889, Me-826.. Effectively better than 80-92% of the population. After my fixes, we both should gain another 10-20 points.

Enjoy the website, if you need any advice on cleaning up credit, or how to dispute, just ask here. I've read 3 of the best books on credit repair and how credit agencies work, and have some good working knowledge on how to "beat the system" when it comes to credit reports.

Comments

Daiwa

on Feb 28, 2005

Thanks for the info & link, Kobrano.

And for any who might be tempted, don't go to freecreditreport.com, which advertises on TV all the time - "Get your FREE credit report NOW!" - their shit ain't free. It's one of those Time-Life Series style scams where you can get your first report "free" alright, but only after you give them your credit card number and commit to $95 a year - you then have 30 days to cancel your "subscription" (only in writing & by snail mail, of course, never online the way you signed up for the damn thing) or some such shit in order to make it truly "free."

I can't believe outfits like that are allowed to operate with such deceptive and devious business practices, but there ya go. 'Bout time some legislation put them out of business.

Cheers,
Daiwa

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