by Bianca Raven

Created on: January 13, 2009   Last Updated: April 29, 2010

Guide to Fixing Errors on Your Credit Report

Learning to repair your own credit can be rewarding and can also teach you a lot about your own financial responsibility, but what happens if you've done all the right things with your repayments and you still find your score is lower than it should be?

If this has happened to you then your credit score may be affected by an error on your credit listing somewhere. Credit reporting errors are quite common and they are also relatively simple to repair.

How Your Credit Report Works

The three major credit reporting agencies collect and collate information regarding your credit history and use this information to calculate your credit score.

Whenever you apply for any form of credit the enquiry is listed on your credit report. When you're late with a repayment or delinquent on a loan account, the bank or credit company will report this action to the credit reporting agencies and your overall score will be amended accordingly.

How Credit Report Errors Can Happen

Unfortunately, although many credit companies are quick to report negative information, they aren't always as eager to report the positive changes you might have made to your financial behavior. In these cases you may have caught up your delinquent payments already but it may not have been reported.

Another common error on many credit reports are spelling errors. The information that's entered into your credit enquiry from a bank or credit company in most cases is entered by a human and there's always a risk of a little bit of human error will find its way into such an important document.

A more serious error that may appear on your report is false information about any loans for which you've applied. Cases of identity theft are often uncovered after the thieves have already applied for loans or credit facilities in your name. They have the money but you have the resultant credit problems.

Finding Errors on Your Credit Report

Before you can accurately determine if your report contains any incorrect information you'll need to order a full copy of your credit report from all three credit reporting agencies; TransUnion, Equifax and Experion.

The reason for ordering a copy from each reporting agency is that they do collect slightly different information to each other. You may find that one agency will list an error, whereas another may not.

Repairing Errors On Your Credit Report

Your rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act state that you can dispute any listing

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