Credit Repair Tips - Obtaining Your Credit Report

If you're not familiar with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) established in 1971, you need to understand it and know your rights as a consumer. One of your rights as a consumer is obtaining your report. This is one of my credit repair tips is to get your free report.

Any credit repair tips that come from me will refer to this act constantly because it is the foundation of your credit report and rights especially when it comes to dealing with the big 3 bureaus.

This act requires that the national consumer reporting agencies provide you a copy of your report once every 12 months free of charge. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) enforces this law so you can benefit from your rights.

So then, how do you go about getting a free copy of this report? It's not hard at all really. All you have to do is go to the website annualcreditreport.com and request one. If you have done so in the past and it has not been at least 12 months, it will tell you and you will not be able to get one anyway. After your 12 months has expired, you can try again and you should get it. I have personally done this several times.

The 3 credit recording bureaus Equifax, Experian and Transunion set up a central website where you can go on-line to get your report. The web address is just above. Also they have a toll-free number you can call or you can request it by regular mail.

You can call 877-322-8228 or complete the Annual Credit Report Request Form and mail it to: Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281. You can find the form at annualcreditreport.com/cra/order.

You can request a report from all 3 credit bureaus at the same time. Watch out though for websites that try to mask themselves as the source for free credit reports. They tend to trick you using the words "free credit report" or "free credit scores" and "free credit monitoring". The one and only site on the web that will give you a free report is the one I listed here for you in this article. Also you need to know that they will never send you any emails requesting information from you or soliciting you in any way.

So how long does it take to get your free report? Well again, if you follow my credit repair tips by doing this online, you should get it instantly. You do have to fill out your personal information. They will not ask you for any credit card information at all. So if you find yourself on a site that does ask for payment information, click the red X in the upper right hand corner of your browser.

Now a good reason to get this free copy of your report is because you need to know what it contains. Any lenders you may be talking to is using this to make a decision and decide how much they will loan you and what rate you will pay.

U.S. PIRG, the federation of state Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), did a survey of adults in 30 states. They had all of them get copies of their reports. This group stands up to powerful special interests on behalf of the American public, working to win concrete results for our health and our well-being.

The statistics they found are mind-blowing. It enforces the reasons why you should be getting this report at least once each year.

Here's some of the statistics they reported:

- Twenty-five percent (25%) of the reports surveyed contained serious errors that could result in the denial of credit, such as false delinquencies or accounts that did not belong to the consumer;
- Fifty-four percent (54%) of the reports contained personal demographic information that was misspelled, long-outdated, belonged to a stranger, or was otherwise incorrect;
- Twenty-two percent (22%) of the reports listed the same mortgage or loan twice;
- Almost eight percent (8%) of the credit reports were missing major credit, loan, mortgage, or other consumer accounts that demonstrate the creditworthiness of the consumer;
- Thirty percent (30%) of the reports contained credit accounts that had been closed by the consumer but remained listed as open;
- Altogether, 79% of the reports surveyed contained either serious errors or other mistakes of some kind.

So with numbers like these, is there any wonder why so many people are denied loans? Especially when buying a house is this a big problem.

So what is one of my best credit repair tips for this article? Get your copy now and make sure you follow-up and get any errors you may find corrected.

By: Jeff Ragan

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Jeffrey Ragan has several years of experience helping people reach their goals and wants to help you learn more credit repair tips and other helpful information on their website, First-Time-Home-Buyer-Solutions.com.