what the Credit Bureaus Don't want You to Know!

If the credit bureaus had their way, you would believe exactly what they tell you, no questions asked. But please, don't fall into their trap. Chance are, your credit report contains one or more errors, and those errors are negatively impacting your life. Check out these statistics revealed by a study conducted by the national Association of State Public Interest Research Groups:

1. 79% of all credit reports contain some type of error.

2. 54% contain inaccurate personal information, such as a number, or out-of-date address. For example, one man's business partner was listed on his report as his spouse.

3. 30% listed paid off the closed accounts as being open. ( This can either hurt or help your score, depending on whether the account was paid perfectly or had late payments.)

4. 22% had the same loan listed twice. ( This skews the debt-to income ratio against you. Even worse, if there are duplicate late payments, Your score is penalized twice. Included in the packet of letters is one you can use to have a duplicate account removed.)

5. 8% omitted a major credit card, loan, or a mortgage that would have provided positive credit and boosted the person's score, if it had been included.

This is outrage! Can you imagine if the work you did contained errors 79% of time? How fast would you be put on step one step two, and then booted out the door? So why are the credit bureaus making so many errors on our credit files?

It is because about 30,000 data entry clerk process 4.5 billion pieces of credit information each and every month. If there is a 1% error factor, that would result in 45 million errors, per month. Wow.

The reason it is important for you to know this information is so that you have the confidence to challenge the accuracy of your own credit report. You need to understand that you are not doing anything wired or uncalled for when you challenge their accuracy.