What The Heck Is A Bureau Credit Repair Report?
What The Heck Is A Bureau Credit Repair Report?
You get a bureau credit repair report from one of three federally recognized credit bureaus - Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. You can get one free from each of these credit bureaus, which means you can get up to three free bureau credit repair reports per year. You should take advantage of this in order to keep an eye on your credit, your money and your personal security. If you are repairing your credit in any way, they become especially important.
"Whoops. There's A Mistake."
It is vitally important to get a jump on correcting any mistakes, inaccuracies or questionable transactions on your credit report. The longer you put it off, the longer it will take to get to get things straightened out. In the meantime, your credit rating suffers. And that's just the highlight. You can be hounded by bill collectors for services and products you never paid for.
When you see a mistake, you have to make a hand-written request to challenge the information and send it to the credit bureau that sent you the bureau credit repair report. The credit bureau has 30 days to get back to you. In the meantime, they will be contacting all of your creditors to verify if what you said was true. If they can't find anything to disprove your written request, they'll change the information in your favor.
You also have the right to make written statements to be included into your bureau credit repair report. These can be added as a permanent part of your report in order for any future lender or whoever to read your side of the story. Say you got caught in Hurricane Katrina and were completely wiped out. Before that, you never missed a loan repayment in your life. This stuff is seriously taken into consideration.
What It's Not
A bureau credit repair report does NOT magically remove all information about your substantiated bad credit days, such as information about bankruptcies, loans and repossessions. Changing that information is highly illegal. A bureau credit repair report also is not a new or secondary identity file about your credit history. That also is incredibly illegal - right up there with fake I.D.'s and forged passports.
If you have to have changes made to your bureau credit repair report, be sure those changes are actually put into your report. The best way to do that is to order another report. Life is fun, isn't it?