Credit Repair and Your Legal Rights

Getting your credit repaired is not just a matter of knowing how to deal with creditors, collection firms, and consumer reporting agencies. It is also essential that you know your legal rights under the laws dealing with credit reports and credit repair organizations. Knowing your rights will aid you in your fight to regain a respectable credit rating, and will also help you to avoid the danger of falling for a credit repair scam.

You have a number of rights regarding what other parties may do what your credit information. The law states that consumer reporting agencies must and sure that the information found on your credit report is accurate. This is in line with the permissions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Therefore, if you believe there to be inaccuracies on your credit report, you can call the attention of the consumer reporting agencies and they will have to verify the information. If they cannot verify it, then under the law, they must make corrections to the report and send you a free copy of the corrected report. Furthermore, once an agency has made a correction to your credit report, it may not refile the negative information that was changed for a duration of five days since you received notice of the correction.

You also possess the right to have any negative information dropped from your report after a certain period of time. Bankruptcies should be removed from your report after a period of 10 years. A tax lien can only remain on your report for seven years after it has been paid for. Other types of negative information can only remain on the report for as long as seven years from the date the information was first provided.

By law, you are also entitled to receive a free credit report once every 12 months from each of the three national credit reporting agencies, which are Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion.

The Credit Repair Organizations Act gives you certain rights when dealing with credit repair services. Credit repair firms are required to inform you of your rights and obligations before you can sign a contract with them. They are also prohibited from taking their fee from you before they provide you with their services. You are also given a five day waiting period after the contract signing in which you are allowed to get out of your contract at anytime without having to pay a fee.