Your Right to an Accurate Credit Report
November 7, 2020Post Bankruptcy Harassment
Your credit report is a record of your credit activities, including home and auto loans, credit card accounts, and actions taken against you because of unpaid bills. Your report also contains identifying information about you, public records (like judgments or tax liens), and credit ratings or scores based on your how much you have borrowed and how promptly you repay your debts. Specialty credit reports may contain your employment history, criminal record, insurance claims, or check-writing history.
What’s at Stake
Your credit report is critically important in the modern era. Lenders and insurance companies use it to decide whether to give you a loan or insurance. Potential employers look at it to decide whether to hire you. In short, the credit reporting agencies that make and sell your report quite literally hold your financial life in their hands.
The Problem
Credit reports are often wrong. As reported by CBS News in this article and as shown in various studies over the past 15 years, a huge percentage of credit reports contain errors. The errors can come in a variety of ways. The credit reporting agencies (who receive and assemble information from creditors) may “mix” your information with someone else’s. A creditor might report false information about you to the agency. Or, you may be a victim of identity theft.
If you believe there are errors in your credit report, download our free, step-by-step guide for disputing your credit report the right way.
For those coming out of bankruptcy, the problem can be even worse. Creditors (or Credit Reporting Agencies) sometimes continue to report the discharged debt as if you never filed bankruptcy at all, sometimes making it look like you owe thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars that you don’t owe. Or making it look like (instead of taking care of things in bankruptcy) you simply stopped paying the debt. Often, even when you dispute this false information to the Credit Reporting Agencies, they (and your Creditors) simply “verify” that it is true.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) gives you the right to have your credit reported accurately, and to have mistakes fixed promptly. That’s why our Discharge Compliance Review includes a free review of all of your credit reports. If we find that either the Credit Reporting Agencies — or your former Creditors — are violating the FCRA or other law, we can take action to enforce your rights, correct your report, and seek money damages. Since we are paid only from what we collect, there are no out of pocket fees for you to pay.
Our Experience
We have been litigating credit reporting cases since 1998 and regularly bring cases against major credit reporting agencies Experian, Equifax, and Trans Union, as well as creditors who fail to correct disputed information. In 2003, we obtained one of the highest jury verdicts in America against a creditor in an FCRA case.
If a credit reporting agency or creditor is reporting false information about you, contact us. We want to protect your right to an accurate credit report.
