When to Check Credit Reports?

Credit reports and credit scores are used widely in this country.  Practically every financial activity somehow involves your credit score.  If it’s wrong or lower than it should be, you can be charged additional fees and/or thousands more in interest.

Right now, there are considerable disruptions in the financial world.  We are seeing drastic changes involving student loans as you likely know.  Duplication of accounts, erroneous reports of missed or late payments are frequent and can be very damaging.

Just yesterday, we heard from a potential client who had been making his payments on time, but due to an addressing error, his loan servicer had changed and he did not receive notice of the change.  So his payments have been going to the old servicer.  Meantime, the new servicer has dinged his credit for 90 days for missed payments.  You can bet something like that can cause a score to decline precipitously.  People are regularly denied a mortgage, car, apartment, or new credit for this.  At the very least, existing costs will likely go up as other creditors perceive a risky borrower.

This can go on for awhile unless you check your credit and take action to fix it.

You can obtain free credit reports at annualcreditreport.com.  You don’t have to sign up for any notification service, but you can if you want to.

If you believe your credit has been harmed by this, please download your reports and send the PDFs to us – along with a line saying what you think is incorrect and why.  We’ll review it for free.  If you are correct, we can dispute this, and even file a Fair Credit Reporting Act case — on a contingency.  That means no fee unless we win.