Understanding Your Rights to Dispute Credit Report Errors

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) is a federal law that protects consumers against credit report errors. Credit reports play an important role in our society and it is important to ensure accuracy. The FCRA requires both furnishers and reporters of information to verify the correctness of their data.

An incorrect credit report can lead to a denial of credit, a higher interest rate, or a number of other issues. If a violation of the FCRA is proven, the consumer can recover damages such as actual damages or statuary damages between $100 and $1000. Like the FDCPA, consumers can also recover attorney fees and costs. Therefore, if we bring a FCRA on your behalf, you will never owe us any money out of pocket. We work on a contingency fee basis.

Understanding credit reports and the FCRA is often difficult. First you must pull a copy of your credit report. This can be done once a year for free at this site. A credit score is not provided with the free report but can be bought for an extra charge, along with a myriad of credit monitoring tools.

The Dispute Process

If you see or suspect an error on your credit report, you must file a dispute with the reporting agency (Equifax, Experian, or TransUnion). A dispute must be filed with each agency separately. The dispute can be filed electronically, over the phone, or through the mail. As always, it is highly encouraged to provide as much evidence of the error as possible.

Once the credit report error dispute is filed, the reporting agency must then verify the information with the furnisher. Sometimes the erroneous information will be removed and sometimes the furnisher will respond that the information is correct even though it is not.

At this point, if the information is still incorrect, the consumer can file a complaint under the FCRA and damages can be recovered.

If the furnisher is a third party debt collector, consumers may also have additional remedies under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act‎.

Again, understanding a credit report can be difficult and information that seems to be incorrect could actually be correct. Please feel free to contact us with any questions or concerns regarding your credit report or credit report errors.

Additional information on credit report errors can be found on the FTC site.  Texas specific information can be found on the AG’s site.