Consumer’s rights under Fair Credit Reporting Act to fix credit issues

Credit report is vital as it has great impact on your life. So, if you find any mistakes or if you doubt your information get stolen, then you need to take some prompt action as soon as possible. Otherwise your credit score gets hurt and you may face some difficulties in your financial life. For the consumer’s help, the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) has been formed. In short, this act helps to maintain the accuracy, truth and most importantly the privacy of every consumer’s file.

What is called Fair Credit Reporting Act?

The Fair Credit Reporting Act is mainly a federal law that rules Credit Reporting Agency and their work. FCRA mainly protects the privacy and rightness of all consumer credit information. FCRA protects the consumer’s right to get the correct information, access and also helps to provide solution if any information violates their rights.

List of some major rights under FCRA

1. The consumer must be told if his /her information has been used A lender or creditor must provide you the name address and contact number of the agency who supplied all of your information in case of rejection or denial of application or any action that have made against you after checking your credit report or any other consumer report.

2. A consumer have full right to know what type of information is there in his/her file A consumer can ask for all the information in the file of consumer reporting agency. To get the information a consumer need to provide social security number.

3. A consumer may get free disclosure if:

• The consumer is the victim of identity theft and set a fraud alert in the file.
• The file is full of inaccurate informations caused by the fraud.
• Any adverse step has taken by the lender or creditor against you.
• You have no job and expect to apply within 60 days.

4. Consumer can ask for credit report from the consumer reporting agencies.

5. If the consumer identify any inaccurate or incomplete information in the file, then he/ she can dispute the error and report to the consumer reporting agency for further investigation.

6. The inaccurate, incomplete information should be removed or corrected from the consumer’s file within 30 days. The consumer reporting agency should take the action.

7. Consumer reporting agencies will not report the old negative error (7 years old) in file or more than 10 years old bankruptcies report.

8. The consumer reporting agency can give the information of consumer with a valid reason only. A creditor, insurer, employer. landlord should mention the valid need with an application to access the file.

9. Consumer reporting agencies have no right to provide the consumer’s credit information to a potential employer without the concerned person's written permission.

10. Consumer reporting agencies should remove your name from marketing list as per your request.

11. If you’re a victim of holiday identity theft, then FCRA will help you to solve the matter and also recover from the crisis.

Conclusion

Above mentioned laws are dedicated for all consumer who are much responsible with their finance. FCRA has enacted these rules to make the consumer aware in order to get their rights in a proper way. So, your first and foremost duty is to know all the federal laws and determined that your credit information is safe, error free. After this, you should check the credit report on a regular basis so that you can maintain the accuracy of the report consistently. Remember, the more you care your credit report the better you can build the score.