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How to Carefully Utilize Rights that 3 Credit Reports Grant

If you have become a credit consumer recently, you must have heard people referring to 3 credit reports a number of times. What actually are these three reports and what is their significance in your financial life? Experian, Equifax and TransUnion are the three major credit bureaus in the United States that prepare individual reports for every credit consumer in the country. These reports come out as 3 credit reports and are offered to the credit consumers free of cost once every year.

However, that doesn’t restrict one from viewing his or her credit reports more than once. A number of situations require you to obtain, view and review your credit reports. Though, you may have to pay a price to obtain them purposely.

Consumer Rights Regarding Credit Reports

The Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act of 2003 instructs the three credit agencies to grant some important rights to the credit consumers. These rights help the credit consumers to make use of three credit reports in a variety of different situations.

First of all, credit reports can be used by a credit consumer to keep a track of his or her credit history. The three main benefits of doing so are:

  • It helps one to learn his or her eligibility to get approved for a new loan.
  • It enables one to take steps towards improvement of credit score if it is not already in a good form.
  • It helps one to prevent situations like credit frauds and identity theft.

A credit consumer can utilize the right of applying alert on the credit reports in case he or she senses the attempt to misuse the credit. These alerts can be applied if your credit information has been used by someone to illegally apply for fresh credit or a utility service. In case any such things happen in future, the credit consumer is alerted via phone, email or text messages.

Another right granted to credit consumers is to block the altered information appearing on the credit reports. This is the right that prevents the occurrence of identity theft. You must be aware of the procedure to use alerts as well as to block the altered information.

You may get denied for a loan on the grounds of wrong information that your credit reports may contain. If you believe that there is no valid reason for denial, you have the right to dispute the credit report information with one or more credit bureaus. Besides, you can also dispute any negative information that you find in the credit reports. For instance, there might appear one or more negative entries that should have expired after seven years time period.

If your credit reports reflect pending debt, you have the right to get it verified form the concerned creditor or collection agency. As you can see, there are many reasons for which you need to monitor your credit reports. Don’t hesitate to review your credit reports and make use of the rights that have been granted to you. However, make sure that you don’t make many inquiries as it may go against your interests.