Due to the prevalent economic crisis that hit all industries especially the real estate world, it is now not as easy to acquire loans, apply for insurance policies or enter other finance related transactions. Your financial standing is of utmost concern for lenders. This contains information about your current finances, previous records of arrests or lawsuits related to borrowing money or bankruptcy. Thus, it is your primary task to protect your credit report. Any inaccuracy or violation of privacy must be immediately addressed.

Consumer reporting companies are legally allowed to disclose your financial information to companies and/or individuals seeking the truth about your finances. But this liberty has certain limitations. The federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) binds such companies to ensure accuracy and privacy of your documents. On the other hand, you are also faced with the obligation to maintain healthy knowledge of your own status.

Making sure your report contains truthful and complete data is utterly important. Any information in it can affect the way how lenders, insurance companies and other relevant parties judge your eligibility as a borrower and/or applicant. It is very easy to be updated with your credit standing. There are nationwide consumers reporting companies that give free reports once every year. If despite your unswerving efforts to keep up with your report there still seems to be errors, there are ways you can dispute such wrongdoing.

The FCRA instigates that such companies and information providers could be held responsible for correcting inaccurate and/or incomplete reports. An investigation for the dispute can be easy with these steps:


  1. Furnish a letter containing your complete, name, address and nature of dispute. The letter should also contain your immediate request for the changes to be made. It would be helpful if you attach copies of the incorrect documents, encircle or highlight the wrong items and provide a statement of the appropriate details.

  2. Send this letter and attachments via certified mail. As this mail would contain the statement “return receipt requested”, you can rest that the consumer reporting company would notify you the minute they receive your letter. But to doubly sure, make several backup copies of the letter and supporting documents so that in any case your mail gets lost, you can immediately respond with a new batch of the dispute records.

  3. Expect that the investigation would pursue for at most a month. The items in question be reviewed, corrected and verified by the information provider.

  4. The company would send you a formal letter containing the results of the investigation. The name, address and phone number of the information provider would also be included in it. And a free report would also be given to you. Note though that this would not be considered as your annual report.

  5. If the alterations would matter to your transactions in the past six months, you can ask the company to give proper notices to such companies or individuals.

  6. If the dispute was not resolved, the records of such process would still be included in your file and future reports.


Your credit report is one of your most valuable possessions. Watch it with care that all its details are accurate so that your endeavors to borrow money, apply for loans or insurance policies would not be denied in the future. In the end, you and your lender and other parties involved would be secured you are financially capable.

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