The FTC has found that about 5% of Americans have errors in their credit reports and that could mean that you may have a harder time borrowing or just pay higher interest rates. While I am not so meticulous in getting my free credit report copy each year, and during the last year, I refinanced my home, changed my auto insurance policy, and leased a car without any problem, after reading about this report, I still decided to get a copy of my credit history. Obviously, it is free, and easy to get (you have to remember some basic information about your previous addresses and loans because each credit agency asks for different information to confirm your identity).
Well, I did find some minor errors on my report. For instance, Experian completely missed one address that I lived at during the late 90s for several years. And Equifax actually made two addresses out of one, in one case it was correctly listed as Apt# A19 and another time as Apt#819. I don't know if it makes any difference because what was really accurate was a record of my credit accounts.
So it is likely that those 5% errors include such errors as well, but the most interesting part is that the impact of these errors on the credit score is modest. And if you do make the effort to correct the mistakes, the improvement in the credit score is so small, that it is not worth the effort because all the three bureaus are extremely unfriendly and make it nearly impossible to fix gross errors. The work is outsourced to overseas firms and they have zero interest in helping us. So unless you are a victim of identity theft by an illegal, don't worry too much.
Well, I did find some minor errors on my report. For instance, Experian completely missed one address that I lived at during the late 90s for several years. And Equifax actually made two addresses out of one, in one case it was correctly listed as Apt# A19 and another time as Apt#819. I don't know if it makes any difference because what was really accurate was a record of my credit accounts.
So it is likely that those 5% errors include such errors as well, but the most interesting part is that the impact of these errors on the credit score is modest. And if you do make the effort to correct the mistakes, the improvement in the credit score is so small, that it is not worth the effort because all the three bureaus are extremely unfriendly and make it nearly impossible to fix gross errors. The work is outsourced to overseas firms and they have zero interest in helping us. So unless you are a victim of identity theft by an illegal, don't worry too much.