What To Do When Another Person’s Information On Your Credit Report

A mixed filed is when credit information from one person in incorrectly placed in the credit file of another person.  For instance, a person named John A. Smith living in Dallas, Texas may pull his credit report and see a debt collector reporting an eviction debt belonging to a “John Smith” living in Houston, Texas.  Since John A. Smith has never lived in Houston, this is an obvious and verifiable mistake.  The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has noted one cause of this problem:

Data and data entry errors: Furnishers can input accurate consumer information incorrectly or make typographical mistakes (e.g., transposing two digits in an SSN, misspelling names, transposing first and middle names).[cite omitted] Consumers (when applying for a loan) can provide inaccurate data to furnishers. For both of these types of inaccuracies, the credit bureau could pass along the inaccuracy to the consumer’s file.

Data errors can also lead to file matching problems by causing the bureau to put the trade line into a separate or “orphan” file distinct from the consumer’s original credit file, and thus not include it in the consumer’s credit report. Alternatively, data inaccuracy could cause a consumer’s trade line to be mixed in with another consumer’s file (e.g., when the mistake causes the consumer’s header information to match or resemble the identity of another consumer).

Ways to Correct

You must dispute the inaccurate information with Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion and have them reinvestigate the problem and hopefully correct it.  If they don’t, you may then have standing under the FCRA to bring a claim against them and the furnisher of the information.

Please give us a call for help with this problem.