Free Credit Reports Instantly

Archive for July, 2010

Knowing your credit score can help you prevent rejection when applying for credit. To understand why this numerical rating of your financial history matters, keep reading.

Knowing your credit score can help you in the following ways:

• It can give you a starting point at which you would either begin to build credit or you would begin to improve your credit.
• It can save you time, because you would have a better idea if you are even close to be eligible for any financing.
• Knowing and checking your credit report as well as your credit score can help pinpoint errors. (Note: you are entitled to the free report, but not a free numerical score calculation.)
• In the event you already have been rejected for a loan, you can better understand why. In some cases, it could be simply the result of a small clerical error that can be fixed.
• Knowing your credit score can also help you gauge what hurts your credit the most. This in conjunction with viewing your credit report can help you come up with a repayment plan.
• Knowing your numerical rating of your creditworthiness can also help you compare yourself with the national average. This is one more incentive to help you improve your situation if you need help.

Ordering your Score

Your credit score is a separate entity than your credit report. Therefore, unlike your credit report you are not entitled by law to obtain it for free per request of an agency. It may be given to you, however, as a promotional tool to get you to sign up for monitoring services.

Warnings

If you are in the process of requesting free monitoring services on your files, make sure you use a secure server. This is true as well when seeking a free credit report.

The government stepped in since then to protect consumers from misleading offers. One of these new amendments to rules pertaining about free credit reports is certain portions of the CARD Act.

As of April 2 the CARD Act included rules addressing disclosures about credit reports. Companies offering free credit reports are required to include a specifically-worded notice across the top of each web page that mentions free reports.

This notice placed on websites declares that the only federally authorized free credit report resource is annualcreditreport.com. If you need to know what the exact wording is you can look within the FTC website regarding the CARD act.

The effort to create CARD Act legislation was made in order to help people obtain a free credit report with not so many strings attached. That way, consumers will get what they need and they will not have to pay monthly monitoring fees.

However, as always with every law there is a loophole. The government did not tell people they could not charge for credit reports.

This charging for credit reports steers webmasters clear of having to make an announcement that these complimentary records are available at annualcreditreport.com.

However, as always with every law there is a loophole. The government did not tell people they could not charge for credit reports.

This charging for credit reports steers webmasters clear of having to make an announcement that these complimentary records are available at annualcreditreport.com.

One of the most common examples of this is that some Credit monitoring webmasters are now charging a token amount of $1 so that a consumer can obtain a free credit report.

The other clincher is that advertisers know that the Free Credit Report Rule of both 2003 and onward does not include credit scores. Therefore, marketing efforts are still very misleading. The problem has not yet been solved.

Monitoring companies can still trick you into signing up for credit monitoring or other services you do not need. Be careful, not unless you think you want these services.

Then by all means that is your right as well. It does help to keep track of your credit report, as well as your credit score on a regular basis. This helps prevent further cases of identity theft.

Of course, these loopholes make it easier for monitoring services to make money. However, sometimes it is at the frustration of the consumer. You should look for a company that offers these types of services and yet does not mislead you.

There is one main advantage of seeking a free credit report. This would be to spot cases of identity theft early. An additional benefit would be to spot errors right away and to have them fixed.

Countless stories have probably been told by now telling the advantages of a free credit report. However, this one seems to stand out the most:

It is the one about Sylvia Gallow-Vazquez that has circulated the web the past few years. It tells how she applied for a Discover card and then was turned down. She wondered through all of this how such a thing could be possible, because her credit rating was considered to be “impeccable.”

Now, learning of all kinds of unauthorized transactions and identity theft is never fun. This could appear on your credit report all too often. This is what happened to Gallow-Vazquez.

She obtained copies of her credit report after being denied a Discover Card. This is when she first learned she was defrauded.

It was no fun to find out that that her name was used against her for utility services as well as for car and home loan applications. It was also no fun for her to find out she had a two years worth of additional unauthorized transactions such as Internet and phone services affecting her credit report.

However, it is probably safe to say that Sylvia Gallow-Vazquez was quite relieved to find this out when she did. If she had never gained access to her credit report she would have never known so she is glad she did.

Finding negative remarks on her bill was the first step towards change. The next step would be to place alerts on the files and the earlier identity theft is detected the better.

In the case of Sylvia Gallow-Vazquez and similar situations it can take quite awhile to have all these negative marks removed. However, it never is too late to fix your situation.