by: Michael Saunders

According to the Federal Trade Commission - you see the advertisements in newspapers, on TV, and on the Internet. You hear them on the radio. You get fliers in the mail. You may even get calls from telemarketers offering credit repair services.

Do yourself a favor and save some money, too. Don't believe these promises. Only time, a conscious effort, and a personal debt repayment plan will improve your credit report.

Don't let the condition of your credit report or discrimination stop you from gettting the credit that you need and deserve.

Under a federal law called the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you have the right to have erroneous information deleted from your credit report. So if anything is wrong in your credit file, just write the credit bureaus and state your dispute. Errors include closed accounts that are still shown as open, data about accounts you did not open, or negative items, such as bankruptcies or liens, from someone else with a similar name or social security number. The credit bureaus have 30 days to investigate your claims. After that, they must remove any information that is found to be inaccurate or that can no longer be verified.

According to a number of consumers groups in the United States, many credit reports are filled with inaccuracies. The Consumer Federation of America (CFA) and the National Credit Reporting Association (NCRA) once released a landmark study that found that millions of Americans were in jeopardy of being denied credit or unnecessarily paying more for loans because of mistakes in their credit files. The CFA and the NCRA analyzed the credit scores of some 500,000 consumers nationwide. Then they examined dozens of credit files in great detail. Their conclusions were alarming:

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Did you know?

If you need to work on your credit report, the FTC warns that no one can legally remove accurate and timely negative information from a credit report. The law allows you to ask for an investigation of information in your file that you dispute as inaccurate or incomplete.

There is no charge for this. Everything a credit repair clinic can do for you legally, you can do for yourself at little or no cost. According to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).

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Credit Report Inaccuracies - The Impact on Your Credit Rating
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