Credit repair services and resources for Americans.

Why you need copies of your credit report

Do not underestimate the importance of your credit history. A good credit score not only influences your ability to borrow and the cost of borrowing, it also has farther reaching implications. Do you realize that employers, insurers, and landlords commonly request a copy of a person's credit report before hiring them, or providing them with housing? The information contained in your credit report tells a great deal about you. It is up to you to make sure the information is accurate. It is not up to the Credit Reporting Agency.

In the past, accessing your credit report was not free, unless you fell into very specific categories, such as unemployed or currently looking for employment. Unless specific situations applied to you, CRAs could charge you up to $8 for every copy of your report. This made it that much more difficult for consumers to know what information was being reported about them.

Services to repair credit are available. These services cannot remove accurate information from anyone's credit report. What they can do is help consumers remove inaccurate, out of date, and false information from their reports. There expertise lies in understanding the intricacies of credit laws, and ensuring that you benefit from the laws that exist to protect you.

The amendment to the Fair Credit Reporting Act came into effect in December, 2004, and has been slowly rolled out across the country in phases since them. The program is now in effect nation wide, and every US citizen from any State can now formally request copies of their free credit reports every 12 months.

Ordering your Free Credit Report

You will need to supply some information when ordering your free reports, including your name, address, Social Security number, and date of birth. If your address has changed in the past two years, you might need to provide your previous address. The CRAs may ask that you provide a personal detail that only you would know, for example, the amount of your monthly mortgage payment.

There are 3 methods available to request your report. Note that these methods do NOT involve contacting the CRAs individually. When making your request, you can choose to order a free copy from each of the 3 CRAs at one time, or individually.

1) A central website - annualcreditreport.com (important information below)

2) Toll Free telephone - 1-877-322-8228

3) Mail - Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348-5281 (Note: You will need to fill out the formal request form.

There have been numerous complaints launched recently about the centralized website. Many other websites are pretending to provide this service, but they are not valid. The FTC is currently cleaning up these scam websites that dupe unsuspecting consumers into paying for a service that is in fact free

Learn more about these scams from Privacyrights.org.

In addition, the centralized website had blocked the ability of most other sites from providing active links from their websites. As World Privacy Forum notes in it's letter to the FTC dated February 28, 2005:

"While a number of issues regarding www.annualcreditreport.com need to be corrected, one issue stands out as critically important to correct immediately. That is, the active blocking of Web linking to the annualcreditreport.com site is harming consumers right now, and does not serve any apparent purpose other than to direct consumers to for-pay services at the credit bureaus."

(Read full letter at http://www.worldprivacyforum.org/letters/ftc02282005.html)

World Privacy Forum advises consumers to use the telephone or regular mail when requesting their free credit reports.