Don't Let Errors Sink You: Fix Your Equifax Credit Report
You should realize that your financial life is much influenced by your credit report. Your credit report offers information used to decide whether credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, or any other type of loan will be issued to you. Even small errors or even approximative incorrect knowledge about one's credit score could lower the probability of being able to get credit. This is why it is so important to routinely check your credit reports and, should mistakes be found, fix them.
Among the three biggest consumer credit reporting companies running out of the United States is Equifax. Should errors show up on your Equifax credit report, you should have them corrected to prevent any effects on your credit score. This article can help you contest mistakes on your Equifax credit report and raise your credit score.
Check Your Equifax Credit Report Right Now
To begin the procedure, one first needs to ask Equifax for a copy of their credit report so they may spot the mistakes. The official website of AnnualCreditReport.com will let you obtain a free Equifax credit report annually. In this sense, you will obtain a fresh copy of Equifax's report with just the most current information.
Should that prove insufficient, Credit Karma is one of several free credit monitoring services that provide you a copy of your Equifax credit report updated often.
Go over every section carefully.
Carefully review every area of your credit report in search of:
This category is the one you should avoid since it includes accounts not of your own.
Errors in specifics like your name, address, or work experience.
Stories that would make you believe you paid late and in actual sense you paid on time.
Accounts you wish not to be connected to
Older than seven years, ten years in the case of bankruptcy, are the additional bad issues that could be reported.
This helps you to find them early enough and prevent a major catastrophe from happening.
Use Equifax to challenge the mistakes.
Should you find incorrect information on your Equifax credit report, you should notify Equifax for investigation. These are the main approaches to challenge mistakes:
Online: After accessing the Equifax corporate website, click on the button labeled MyEquifax and log into the account. From there you can visit "Disputes" to contest any credit report item.
Mail: After downloading and completing the dispute form, you can forward other documentation bolstering your claims to Equifax.
Keep track of everything you dispute; also, it's crucial to be the record holder of all correspondence. Federal rules controlling Equifax mandate that the business answer such allegations within thirty days. Two weeks handle most of the complaints, percentage-wise.
Offer more document support than ask if the circumstances call for it.
Should Equifax ask more questions to look at your issue, kindly provide supporting documentation like:
For cases involving late payments, pay records demonstrating timely payment for cases prove that.
Records including those meant for a court that contains bad items—old, stale ones—that have negative consequences.
If identity is unclear, proof of identity such as passports or official documents; if residence is unclear, copies of utility bills to show the proper address.
This lets the other person know that you are not nasty to them; rather, you are trying to fix actual issues.
After the inquiry, the action plan is now being thoroughly discussed below:
Usually, Equifax offers investigation results; if changes are made, an updated report needs to be sent forward. Check the findings and assess whether the mistakes have been satisfactorily fixed.
Should there be any objects of dispute not removed or changed, you can file another complaint alleging more investigation. Other disagreements show that you are ready to tackle the issues to avoid credit consequences.
Having stated this, you could want help from a credit repair company.
Correcting difficult mistakes on one's own can be somewhat time-consuming, and occasionally the mistakes themselves are rather complex. See a credit repair company if you find yourself feeling overwhelmed or struggling to grasp all the elements of the procedure. < They have systems in place to handle conflicts and clever plans to maximize leverage in credit bureaus repairing actual mistakes. The only advice is to be careful while choosing a firm and do some study on it before deciding on the last one.
Stay Alert Going Forward
The main tip is to at least once a year check all three of your Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion files. This is a smart approach since then one can quickly fix any fresh error as soon as it arises before the situation spirals even more out of control. Establishing automatic services to track one's credit situation also tells the credit reporting agency if something major in the credit file has happened such that it may be corrected right away.
Let blunders drag your Equifax credit score and hence affect your financial situation. This is not smart. Being aware of the errors enables one to guarantee that mistakes are fixed, hence ensuring your good credit status to allow you safe approvals for the next loans and be given prime rates for which you qualify. Still, if you don't give up you can fix your Equifax credit record and eventually achieve the very best financial situation available.