Important Facts Worth Knowing About Credit Report Bureaus in the US
There are three main credit report bureaus in America, each of which will provide you with information about your credit history. It can contain data on your identity, payment habits, public records including arrests, bankruptcies, debts, credit data information, and details of your personal history including family members and dependents as well as previous employment and previous addresses.
Selling Reports
It is also normal practice for credit report bureaus to sell their credit reports to those companies and individuals that grant credit including banks and financial institutions. They also sell credit reports to retailers who in turn need to use the information contained in the credit report to evaluate the viability of extending credit to the applicant or not.
The three main credit report bureaus in the US include Equifax, Experian, and Trans Union. Each of these bureaus provide coverage (nationwide) related to information on consumer credit. What's more, these credit report bureaus work to make profit. In fact, they are able to generate many billions of dollars by way of revenue on an annual basis through sale of copies of credit reports to mailing lists and creditors. In fact, it is estimated that Trans Union alone made about one and a half billion dollars in a single year.
However, you must also understand at the very outset that the basic function of these and other credit report bureaus is to simply keep records on consumers. This includes data on who provides credit, when the credit was provided, the amount of credit given, and the repayment history of the consumer regarding the credit taken by them.
The credit report bureaus earn money from people interested in learning about the credit standing of others. What's more, such bureaus are not, in fact, run by the police, banks, or even government, and they are also not empowered to take legal action against consumers.
Basically, these credit report bureaus simply have big computer systems that can hold voluminous amounts of information on nearly every citizen in the US. However, a negative aspect to these credit report bureaus is that because the amount of information that they store is so great, and because methods of storing information are not very sophisticated, it is common for errors to creep into the credit reports they issue.
Fortunately, to protect the interests of ordinary citizens, there are enough Federal laws in place to protect the interests of the consumer, and thus not lead to further chaos.
Credit report bureaus get their information from banks, retailers, as well as from collection agencies. They will continue keeping records on consumers' credit history for about ten years.
In the case of closed or inactive accounts, the information is kept for ten years from the time of the consumer's last activity. Derogatory records are maintained for seven years from the time of delinquency. Public records are maintained for seven years, while Chapter Seven bankruptcies information remains with the bureau for ten years from the date of filing for bankruptcy.
