When you see a copy of your credit report thoroughly, you will notice the following information displayed.
1) Identification information: you will see your name, date of birth and social security number. This information is mainly used for personal identification. Sometimes, information about your present employment is also listed. If you are married, you will see your spouse’s name on your credit copy, current and previous addresses for further identification.
2) Public record information: This consists of data from the federal, state or county court records. You will also see information on bankruptcies, lien or judgments and other types of claims. It will have specific information like date filed, court case number, amount, status and date settled.
3) Collection Agency Information: If the account is turned over to a collection agency by one of your creditor, it will show up as a collection item, because you were not able to pay your creditor as agreed. This section will have the name of the collection agency, original creditor/client, original amount, balance due and account number.
4) Account Information: this will include all types of information like mortgage, installment, revolving, open and closed Accounts. You will also information of accounts in good standing, accounts currently past due, and negative account history. Merchant/Creditor name, Subscriber Number, account number, Date opened, Date closed, Current Balance, Highest credit limit, highest amount of credit used, and your Repayment History. Your Repayment History is shown as a string of numbers showing your payment history.
In this section, you will come to know the status of each account and history. They are generally marked as follows:
- Current Account – “Account Open” or “Closed in Good Standing”
- Closed Account – Account Closed
- Paid Account – Closed Account or Zero Balance
- Credit Account Reinstated – Previously Closed Account Now Available for use
- Foreclosure – Collateral sold to collect Defaulted Mortgage
- Collection Account – Account Assigned to Collection Agency
- Inquiry – your credit information was requested by this Company
5) Inquiries: certain types of inquiries like any legitimate requests from your creditors to see your credit history will show up as an inquiry. Make sure that you don’t have too much inquiries otherwise it will look like you have been using too much of credit. Inquiries that do not show up on your credit copy except your view are not used in the calculation of your credit scores.
6) Consumer statements: If there is a disputed item and you have tried hard to get it removed from your credit copy by the bureaus, but failed; you can write 100 words or less to prove your disagreement with a certain creditor. This statement will be added to your personal credit report and your future lenders will get to know your point on the disputed item.
- When you are looking in your credit copy, make sure that the personal information is showing up correctly.
- Make sure that the accounts are listed correctly.
- Your credit lines have to be listed correctly.
- And your account balances should show up correctly.
- If you have closed a certain account, it should be reported as “Account closed by consumer”
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 6:16 pm and is filed under Credit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.