compare credit report – transunion experian equifax

February 15, 2011

Cleaning Up Bad Accounts on Your Transunion, Equifax and Experian Credit Files

Tony Banks asked:




The process of cleaning bad entries from your file is very doable so long as you stick to the rules. Yes, there are rules guiding this process and you can achieve significant improvement on your credit rating if you really follow the procedures.

You’ll be needing a good understanding of how to handle bad accounts such as collections, charge-offs, foreclosures, late payments, court judgments, inquiries and even wrongly spelt names and addresses. You want to be sure you’re doing it the right way, else your effort might be wasted. This is where your restoration kit comes in handy. It is a document that is used by many consumers across the country to clean up negative accounts from their credit files when they switch into a self-help repair mode. It is also known as a do-it-yourself technique. It is the alternative method to hiring an expert repair agency to help in restoring your file.

Some of the things you’ll learn to clean up negatives on your file include the laws of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and Fair Debt Collection Practices Act among others. This is what the repair agencies can recall without consulting the books and one of the reasons they are considered experts in their job.

To erase negative items from your report, you’ll be drafting letters and sending them to bureaus as part of a dispute process if there’s any account on your report that is believed to have been a mistake of the bureau. However, some mistakes could originate from the information furnisher that sends info to these bureaus. In this case, you’ll discover that even though a bureau may notify you that the negative account on your file is correct upon conclusion of their investigation, repeating the same dispute procedure with the original creditor (or information furnisher) will solve the problem.

Linda

January 22, 2011

How Long Will Late Payments Be Recorded on My Equifax, Transunion and Experian Credit Reports?

Tony Banks asked:




If you’re asking the question; how long do late payments remain on my credit report? You need not worry it’s not peculiar to you alone. This is often asked by a lot of people who like you are interested in knowing what effect it (late payments on your report) will have on their credit report and scores.

Let’s say you have a credit card bill due 3rd July but you couldn’t make payment till 21th July, this type of lateness will NOT reflect in your report. Before you get puzzled there’s something you must note about late payments, and it’s the fact that a missed payment is not reported to credit bureaus until it is more than 30 days late.

The thirty day mark works for ALL types of credit accounts and is crucial for some reasons; late payments are not reported to the credit bureaus until they reach the credit day mark, and your credit scoring formula will instantly remove points from your scores once you’ve passed the thirty day mark. Also keep in mind that for being late your credit card company can increase your interest rate.

Over time the effect of late payments should fade off, but you’re assured that a negative entry would stay on your credit report for seven years if you do nothing about it, and will have an effect on your rating for a minimum of 3-6 months.

The key here is to prevent accounts from going into the thirty day late status. If you cannot meet up within this period you should then get caught up as soon as possible, at least your credit report will reflect up to date status. Also check your credit report regularly to ensure that incorrect or late reports don’t exist.
Now you know “how long late payments remain on your credit report”.

Brenda

December 15, 2010

I Want to Know What Experian, Equifax and Transunion Use to Calculate My FICO Score

Tony Banks asked:




If there’s any one particular thing that many consumers want other than increasing their score and cleaning negative accounts from their credit report, it is the need to know what the reporting agencies use to churn-out the figures on their reports.

A step by step approach will do here. FICO represents Fair Isaac Corporation and it is the company that is responsible for developing the method used by the credit agencies to translate data fed to them by creditors into numbers.

Equifax, Transunion, and Experian are the big three bureaus that keep records of loan applications you make, debts owed, unpaid collections, missed and late payments, repossessions, foreclosures, inquiries, bankruptcies and other types of financial delinquencies. They are licensed to operate and are regulated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Even though the FICO standard is what these bureaus use, they have modified the method to suit their organizational standard and this is why it is possible for you to get your report from annualcreditreport.com. You will notice that your three scores are not the same. It is also another reason why you should not work on only one or two, but all three reports when repairing your file.

The three bureaus derive your score from the percentage of your financial activities and this is stated below:

Your pay history: 35%
The amounts you owe in debt: 30%
The duration of your credit history: 15%
Types of credit you use: 10%
New lines of credit: 10%

This is an account of the aspects of your file and their percentages will tell you their potential impact and importance in how your FICO score is calculated.

The law, however, enables a consumer to repair his/her own file as some people will prefer mending their own fence than calling a bricklayer to do it for them. Getting one’s hands on a complete credit repair kit will help you clean off errors and negatives off your file, increase your score, and more…

Laurie

November 13, 2010

FICO Score Calculation

Josh Riverside asked:




The firm Fair Isaac Corp. developed a computer model to aid the three main credit bureaus Equifax, Experian, and Trans Union. The model uses a scoring method depending up on your credit information such as credit history, current credit, credit balance, and credit applied for. This information is then compared to the thousands of other customers to give you a FICO score.

The breakdown of the calculation is- past payment history worth 35 percent, outstanding debt is 30 percent, length of credit for 15 percent, new credit for 10 percent, and type of credit is 10 per cent.

All this information is time sensitive. In other words, the score is calculated at the time of request. Therefore, the score is based on what is recent. It will evaluate any delinquencies and bankruptcies in the past, but it will also assess how many late payments you have on the date of request.

Similarly, if the amount of credit utilized by you today is 75 per cent of your total available credit your FICO score is likely to go down as against a person, who is only utilizing only 25 per cent of his or her available credit.

Also note that during the calculation of such FICO score, all other personal information is kept secret. The score is not evaluated on the basis of sex, race, religion, or your marital status.

If you are aware that you may apply for credit sometime soon, it would be advisable to improve your credit status. However, note that this quick fix can only deal with current credit issues and not the ones which have been present there for years. The best step you can take is pay off your credit cards and any other outstanding bills. This will reduce your balance owed and result in a higher FICO score.

Herman

July 23, 2010

How Long Do Late Payments Stay on My Credit Report?

Tony Banks asked:




Late payments do affect your credit rating but what most consumers don’t know is that it also depends on how late your payment is made to the creditor. To start with, late payments that are made to creditors but are no later than 30 days late are not reported to the credit bureaus. So for instance, you have a credit card payment that is due on the 1st of January and you are not able to make the payment until the 27th of January.

This is considered late with the credit card company but will not show up on your credit report as a late payment. It will not show on your credit report until you are more than 30days late and it will show as a “1-time 30day late payment”.

These types of late payments usually affect your score and can have a lasting effect for about 12 months. The same goes with other types of accounts such as car payments, mortgage payments, personal loans as well as secured loans.

Even if the payment is a couple of days late, the best thing is to try and make sure it does not go beyond the 30-day point. It is also important to note that these late payments can cause your interest rate to rise on your credit cards.

This may be the case even if you are only 1 day late as opposed to 20 days late. This will vary depending on the credit card company you are dealing with. You want to check with the your creditor to find out their exact policy.

Joan

July 5, 2010

How Long Do Negative Items Stay on Your Credit Report?

C Morris asked:




I’m going to approach this as a trick question, because there are many of you who don’t know the true answer. If you ask most people, they will give you about the same answer:
- 2 Years for inquiries
-7 Years from when the negative impact occurred
-10 Years for Bankruptcies and other Public Records

How does this turn into a trick question, you might be wondering? Most of those people that we just asked don’t know about another type of report that is held, and is sometimes used for credit decisions. This is known as a Full Factual report.

A Full Factual report is an extended version of your credit report that contains ALL of your history, including the items that have dropped off your regular credit reports. While you thought that your late payments dropped off into oblivion, they could in fact creep up to bite you again and again, depending on who decides to pull your Full Factual report instead of the basic credit report.

Before you freak out, you should realize that this report isn’t used very often. It may come into play during a mortgage application, or some other very high dollar loan consideration, but that’s about it. For some of you, it may never even come up at all, but if it does, you’ll be ready for it.

There is a way to remove those negative items for good and keep them from showing on your Full Factual report. The ONLY way to do this is to dispute the negative items. Now, you can’t just start randomly disputing items and expect to get anywhere. There are laws that have been created which tilt the odds in our favor, but it requires some work to figure out how to use them to your advantage. It is up to you to learn the laws and figure out how to dispute those items and remove them forever. It’s going to take a lot of work, but in the end it will be worth it.

Rosemary

July 1, 2010

Online Credit Report

Beth Pardue asked:




Online credit reports are an easy way to learn what potential lenders will see about us, before we apply for a loan or credit. All too often, our early mismanagement of credit, like during our irresponsible youth, winds up hurting us for years. We get negative information on a credit report that could ruin our chances of getting additional credit long after we have begun managing credit more wisely.

So, if you’re considering making a major financial move it’s a good idea to check your credit report to know where you stand. That way you can be aware of problems before they derail your plans. And once you are aware of these problems, you can take steps to rebuild damaged credit and clean up that record.

If you’ve made mistakes in paying previous loans, bouncing checks, making late payments or other problems, you may still be able to reduce the amount of damage they will do to your credit with explanations or some basic repair. The first step is getting copies of your credit reports. Luckily, obtaining an online credit reports is easy. There are many companies on the Internet that will provide you with a copy of your credit report free of charge. Visit to learn more about getting your free copy of your credit report.

You can also get a copy of your credit report by requesting a copy directly from each of the three major national credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Checking your credit through the credit bureaus directly can cost you as much as $9 per report, although it differs from state to state. You can request that the report be mailed to you or obtain it online. But with so many options available for a free credit report – why pay for the same information that you can get without having to spend a dime?

But regardless of how you obtain a copy of your credit report, the most important thing is that you get a copy for yourself, review it and make sure that it is the best it can be. Then begin working to resolve any activity that can be repaired. The sooner you get a copy of your credit report, the sooner you can begin improving your credit.

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Arthur
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