How do you remove things on your Credit Report?

[Kungjo]

I just got my credit reports from the 3 agencies and noticed that there was a credit card reported on there that wasn't mine. It's a Discover card with a $20,000 credit limit and about $1,300 worth of charges on it. How do I get it off my report? Do I just report it to the 3 agencies as a mistake? How do I prove that it isn't mine? Or do I even have to? I heard that the burden to prove this is on the agencies and not me. Is that true? Is there anything else I should do about it?

Anyone have any BTDT advice?

Thanks,

[rachelh]

I am in mortgage underwriting so I have encountered this before where clients say that something on their credit is not theirs. Did you pull your credit with a credit reporting company or with one of the there bureaus that reports (transunion, equifax, experian)? I dont have much experience working directly with the bureaus - that is why I ask this - I am not sure how they work.

Generally, we would just have the client call the cutomer service number on the credit report and say it was not their account. Usually it was simple - ie. the birthday was the same so it was being reported, the social security number was the same (probably someone mis-typed a digit) but the name, birthday, and address were totally off...If the credit company is good and they can verify some reason to take it off they will and send you a new report right away BUT you have to tell them to notify the 3 reporting credit bureaus that it is not yours so they dont keep reporting it under your name. If they do this for you and it works, it will probably be two months before it stops showing up on your cedit.

ETA - Just read your post again. Stupid me! You wrote you got it from the three bureaus. I guess you would have to call each bureau directly then. Hopefully it as simple as I said above - aside from the three different phone calls.
I also wanted to say that chances are this is just being reported under your name by accident (meaning someone did not have access to your info and open an account under your name). Without seeing the actual account, it really does not seem like it is hurting your credit - $20,000 high credit with only about $1,300 out, no lates...That being said of course you dont want misinformation on your credit report but if it takes more time to get this off than expected, I wouldnt sweat it.

Hope it works! Good Luck!

[MamaMolly]

Well, when I was in college I was turned down for a card and I was told to take it up with the credit bureau. I went to their offices and we cleared the issue right up, it was a similar situation where I had someone else's information on my report. Only it was BAD information!

Anyway, there should be a number or an address to contact the agencies. I wouldn't take any chances with your credit. I'd call the agencies and have them help you out.

HTH

[purpleeyes]

I had a similar problem recently. You can dispute the 'charges' through these companies. If you go to freecreditreport.com you can get started there, they gave us links to the companies and then we disputed it. The companies did all the research, reported back to us and made the changes.
We, unfortunately, had a collections agency after us for the payment, and we had to prove to them it wasn't ours by filling out a notarized form and included the updated credit report. Hopefully it won't get that far for you!
Good luck, let me know if you have any other questions.

[Kungjo]

I had a similar problem recently. You can dispute the 'charges' through these companies. If you go to freecreditreport.com you can get started there, they gave us links to the companies and then we disputed it. The companies did all the research, reported back to us and made the changes.

I did order my credit report from the 3 bureaus through freecreditreport.com. When you refer to companies, are you talking about the credit bureaus themselves or the actual companies where you had a dispute? How did you get the links to them?

Thanks,

[JTsMom]

Suze Orman has some info on her site about this- here's one link:
http://www.suzeorman.com/igsbase/igstemplate.cfm?SRC=MD012&SRCN=aoedetails&GnavID=84&SnavID=20&TnavID=&AreasofExpertiseID=4

Look towards the bottom where it says, "Upon receiving the file, go over all the information to see if everything is accurate. " It's the fourth paragraph. It outlines step by step what to do.


I had a report of a property lien show up on mine once. I wrote letters and called all 3 bureaus, and it was taken care of right away. Don't forget to re-check your report (it will be free) to make sure it really is off.

[purpleeyes]

I did order my credit report from the 3 bureaus through freecreditreport.com. When you refer to companies, are you talking about the credit bureaus themselves or the actual companies where you had a dispute? How did you get the links to them?

Thanks,


We used the companies equifax, experian, and transunion. I guess these are the credit bureaus, right? We got the links to them from freecreditreport.com and went from there.

Here are the dispute links:
www.investigate.equifax.com
www.transunion.com/disputeonline
www.experion.com/dispute

[infocrazy]

Go to annualcreditreport.com. This is actually the one sponsored by the credit bureaus and does not require a membership for monitoring service like I believe but could be wrong freecreditreport.com requires.

In any case, you can pull them up online immediately and then dispute anything that isn't correct. You should also make sure that ALL the addresses are ones that you can identify. Basically dispute anything and everything that isn't accurate...even for stuff that seems closed.

I unfortunately have experience with this. If it is more than a typo, place a fraud alert on all your accounts. Make sure you take notes on what you do in case you need to file a police report--which for me was easier said than done but required by the cc company. Print and keep copies of EVERYTHING!!!

You can get a free credit report from each of the three bureaus every year. So this year, pull them all and get your accounts cleaned up. Then next year, just pull one every 4 months so that you can catch anything quickly.

Hope that helps and it is just a typo. Mine, they actually had my SS# but it was far less damage than it could have been...knockin' real hard on wood.

[ThreeofUs]

I would contact each credit reporting company (equifax, transunion, experion) AND Discover. Document, document, document!