The American Education Institute

There are three (3) main credit bureaus at work in the United States of America today. You may write to them at any time and they will send you a copy of your credit report. One copy per year is free of charge. You may want to go directly on the World Wide Web and request your three (3) free credit reports so that you may receive them more quickly.

Whenever you contact a credit bureau, you need to use your current name and address and, if you have lived there fewer than five years, list your previous address as well. You must also inform the bureau of your correct social security number, the date you were born, and (although it’s not required) some picture I.D. like a photocopy of your driver’s license. Credit bureaus tend to reply the quickest when you provie all of the necessary information and/or documentation up front.

You can also visit a local credit bureau in person in order to view your credit file. Such a local office will be listed in the Yellow Pages and/or on the World Wide Web. By consulting with your nearest credit bureau office, you should be able to obtain as much information about yourself as any potential creditor is ever likely to receive.

It is a rare individual who does not have at lease one “adverse mark” against him/her on their credit report. You need to find whatever potential problems are lurking in yours and resolve them before too many possible creditors get there first.

Credit bureaus are legally obligated to let you see you own credit file and also to tell you who else has asked to view your file within the previous six months. Generally this means a charge to you of $10 to $15, but if you have attempted to borrow money any time within the previous 30 days and were refused, then the credit bureau won’t likely assess a charge for you to see your file.

Here, for example is just such a problem that can easily be fixed: You charged a purchase to your credit card and later returned it because it proved to be defective. If you did not also obtain a credit voucher on that same credit card, you will continue to be billed as though you still have the item you purchased. Even if you never notice this billing or never actually receive it — and therefore never pay it — your credit card company will undoubtedly report you as delinquent to the credit bureaus. This is what you need to do: Write specifically to your credit history file in care of the national credit bureaus at their listed addresses. Explain this situation (that the item was returned but you did not receive a credit voucher) in writing, as well as every other situation you discover that is not quite correct. If you only write to a local credit bureau, your record may not be changed in other locations. So you need to write to the national bureaus because they act as clearing houses, and changing your record with them will assure that only your updated record will be copied to all future firms and institutions that request your credit report, as well as to all local credit bureaus nationwide.

You are always entitled to add an explanation into your credit report for potential lenders and creditors to read. This is your right, and it may prove to be especially helpful it you were unemployed for some period of time or if you suffered some illness or injury that prevented you from making some payments. If you explain each such situation in your credit report file, your potential lenders and creditors can see that these were very unusual occurrences.

You should always write to credit bureaus using positive language and restrict yourself to using facts only. Don’t whine or beg or make up a story. If you were late on some payments because you lost your job, explain it simply and factually. You can’t erase the things you really did nor did not do, but you can certainly explain why they happened. By doing this, you will help to make your problems more understandable to those you want to review your credit favorably.

The Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act provides that you be given the names and addresses of all credit bureaus that placed detrimental information on your credit report. If your application for a loan or credit is ever rejected because of “bad credit,” that potential lender or creditor is required to reveal to you its source for that credit information. You should then try to correct the information if it is false, or write, as previously instructed, to explain it if it is true.

2-22-09
Dr. Eric T. Martin