Have you ever checked your credit score and saw something incorrect?
After the initial moment of panic, what did you do?
Did you dispute it?
Or did you just live with it?
A derogatory item can live on your credit report for 8 years. You do not want to find out about these items when you are applying for a loan.
It took me 5 minutes to dispute an alleged unpaid account on TransUnion and it was removed by the next day.
ACTION STEPS:
1. Download your credit reportsYou can obtain one free credit report from each of the major credit bureaus (TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax) each year. Get all three. While many items will be on all three, sometimes only one will be affected.
2. Review your credit reportsThere is a lot of information in these reports and it can be overwhelming. But, if you take a few minutes, you will quickly figure out how to navigate the report and where to find your current creditors, payment history, balances, and minimum monthly payments. You will also want to check aliases and addresses.
3. Dispute anything that is incorrectThis used to be a lengthy, manual process. For this one I just had to set up a user account with TransUnion, choose the item to dispute and write a short reason why it should be removed. But, even if I had to write a letter and mail it in it would have been worth it not to have to live with this erroneous item for the next 8 years.
Have you ever disputed an item on your credit report? How was your experience?