TransUnion is one of three major companies in the United States that supplies lenders and potential lenders with credit reports. Few documents in a person’s life are more important than their credit report. All lenders – mortgage companies, automobile loan companies, student loan companies, banks – landlords, employers, and any other entity that considers lending you money will buy your credit report from a company like TransUnion, review it, and make a decision about whether to lend you money and if it does lend you money, what the terms of that loan, mortgage, or lease will be.
Although a credit report is so important to the person whose financial history it profiles, and even though TransUnion makes billions of dollars every year selling these credit reports to lenders, errors appear on TransUnion credit reports far too often. When those errors appear, the results or the consequences can be huge. and by huge we mean that you – the potential borrower – lose an opportunity, are denied the loan, or receive the loan at an interest rate far higher than it should be.
As consumer attorneys, we make it our practice to protect consumers. While we are always available to file a TransUnion lawsuit and fight for you, we also want to teach you how to avoid TransUnion credit report problems altogether. Because when a lender looks at a TransUnion credit report, wrong information makes you look like a riskier investment than you are.
Types of Problems
Even though we are writing this article for you, the consumer, you should know that most errors happen for reasons that are beyond your control. As a consumer, you do what you can to maintain a healthy credit report, a healthy credit status, and a good credit score. Here are some things you can do:
- Pay your bills.
- Pay your bills on time.
- Close accounts that you do not use.
- Keep your credit utilization rate low.
- Keep credit card balances low.
- Diversify your credit.
- Consolidate your debts.
- Keep your personal information secure.
- Limit credit inquiries and credit card applications.
- Review your credit report regularly.
These are things that you can do to keep your credit report and your credit status healthy and appealing to lenders. However, mistakes and inaccuracies occur in a TransUnion credit report nonetheless.
Here are some of the things that you can’t control that result in errors and inaccuracies.
- A simple misspelling or typographical error can result in you being confused with someone else and the debt of that someone else appears on your credit report
- The information that TransUnion collects from financial institutions can also be wrong. Whether the financial institution that services your loan errs and provides TransUnion with false or outdated data; whether there’s a glitch in the transmission process; or whether TransUnion makes a mistake in compiling your data and putting it on the report, the result is a mistake.
- Identity theft can result in errors and false information on your credit report.
When a lender looks at your TransUnion credit report while it decides whether to give you a loan, they are not looking at a clear and accurate picture of you.
How to Avoid Problems
While you can’t prevent TransUnion from making errors, you can catch those errors and tell TransUnion to fix them before those errors become problems for you. Here’s how our consumer rights attorneys advise their clients:
- Request your credit report. A federal law called the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) says that credit reporting companies like TransUnion must supply you with a free credit report. The common practice today is for credit reporting companies to give you one free credit report per week. To request your credit report visit TransUnion’s website or go to a website called annualcreditreport.com.
- Review your credit report. When you receive your credit report, review it thoroughly.
- Make sure every word is spelled correctly.
- Make sure there are no errors when it comes to any of your personally identifiable information. This includes current addresses, former addresses, your Social Security number, your name, and any former names.
- Review every account that appears on the report make sure opening dates are accurate and if the account is closed make sure the credit report reflects that it is closed.
- Verify balances, verify account numbers, and verify account limits.
- If there are any credit inquiries that you do not recognize, make a note of them.
- When you see mistakes, make a note of them. Document all the inaccuracies you find.
- Contact an attorney. When you find mistakes on your TransUnion credit report you should contact a consumer protection attorney. They will be able to assess your case, assess the nature of the mistake, provide a strategy on how to fix the mistake, and if the damage has already been done to your financial well-being, start legal action.
- Dispute the mistake. Depending on your circumstances, you may need to file a dispute letter with TransUnion alerting them to the mistake and telling them to fix it. An experienced consumer protection attorney will be able to help you with this step.
Contact a Consumer Protection Attorney
While TransUnion may be careless in compiling and selling your credit report, you should not be. You know and consumer protection attorneys know that your credit report is very important to you. Do what you can to prevent errors on your credit report from ever being seen by a lender, a landlord, or an employer. When you do find mistakes, let a consumer protection attorney know.
Call a consumer protection attorney if you have any questions about an error on your TransUnion credit report, your credit report dispute, or credit reporting in general. A consumer protection attorney can help you fix issues with your credit report and also make sure your rights to sue are preserved should we discover damage to your financial health.
