credit report government agency
credit report government agency
Does anyone know if there is a government agency that oversees wrong credit reporting against a person?
My 21 year old son is trying to buy a home, and today he went to a bank to talk about what his options are. He has an excellent job history, but has never had any credit or bills other than for his college courses, phone, utilities, insurance and one credit/debit card. It was quite a shock when the bank produced a credit report that said my son owes over nine thousand dollars in unpaid medical bills! My son has had few medical needs, since his worst incident was a car accident when he was a minor, but that was completely paid by our insurance company. He’s had no other major medical need, and on everything else, our insurance or his college insurance covered him. One loan officer also said that even if it is proven in court to be inaccurate or false, it will still always remain there the rest of his life as a blemish on his credit. Does anyone know if there is a government agency that oversees wrong or false reporting against a person? To me, this seems to be libel.
The loan officer was mistaken. If there is incorrect information on your report the credit reporting agencies are required by law to remove it.
First your son needs to get a copy of his credit report. He is allowed 1 free one from each of the 3 main agencies(Equifax, TransUnion, Experian) per year. He will need go to http://www.annualcreditreport.com to do this.
Once he gets the report he needs to dispute any invalid information with the CRA. Do this by having him send a certified letter stating that he does not beleive that the debt was his and wants to see proof of the debt. If they are unable to verify the debt by law they must remove it.
If they do validate he will need to find the company that has the information on his report. He must send them a certified letter stating that this debt is not his and they must provide proof that it is. This includes things like the actual medical bill. If they do not respond in 30 days he can have it removed from his report.
Just make sure he does everything in writting, and keeps all of his communications. You can see a couple of sample letters from the link below.
