Common Credit Report Errors

Did you know that your credit report may contain a mistake or several mistakes that are sabotaging your credit score? These are mistakes that you do not have control over, not things such as late payments or bankruptcies. The average American has about thirteen different credit obligations they're trying to balance at once, so it's no wonder why so many people overlook or never know about errors on their credit report. Unfortunately, many of these mistakes are difficult to fix on your own, since most creditors won't be quick to remove a bad mark from your credit report. One of our areas of focus at Credit Fixer is remedying these problems by dealing directly with creditors and business law. Here are a few examples of common credit report errors:

• Payments applied to wrong accounts: When you have multiple accounts with the same lender and call in your payments over the phone, it's entirely possible for the customer service agent to accidently apply your payment to the wrong account. That means one of your accounts may go unpaid for that month, resulting in a late payment and damaging your credit score.
• Different names on your account: Do you sometimes go by abbreviated versions of your name, such as Dan instead of Daniel? Do you include your middle initial on some applications? This could possibly cause some of your credit to go unaccounted for by some bureaus, whether that credit is good or bad. In general, you're better off being consistent in using your name.
• Someone else's credit information: Believe it or not, there are thousands of people that have parts of their credit history put under someone else's name or have another person's credit information put under their name. Unless you have a very unique name, there is likely several other people out there with the same exact or very similar name. Human error makes it easy for credit information to get mixed up among people with similar names.
• Identity theft or fraud: Of course, some of the most common examples of credit report errors stem from identity theft. One method that many identity thieves use is to steal a preapproved credit offer from your mail box, open the account, and then change the address associated with the account. This way they're free to use your account without you ever receiving the bill in the mail.

Please visit our causes of bad credit page to see how you may negatively affect your credit