This law gave ordinary consumers like you many new rights; the most important of them is the RIGHT TO DISPUTE inaccurate information on your credit report. The law has gone through many updates, amendments, and changes over the last decades; adding new sections and expanding consumer coverage. Most recently, The Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act (FACTA) of 2003 added even more rights, inc
luding the right to receive a free copy of your credit report each year. You can’t fix what you cant see , and this law made it possible to easily take that first step in credit repair --- getting your hands on a copy of your own report. There are also strong new regulations on how creditors must deal with identity theft cases, fraud alerts, and how they must dispose of consumer information. Of all these new rights, the most important thing the Fair Credit Reporting Act and FACTA did was to allow consumers the right to dispute inaccurate information on their reports. The exact language in the Act reads as follows :
“If the completeness or accuracy of any item
of information contained in a consumer's file at a consumer reporting
agency is disputed by the consumer and the consumer notifies the agency
directly of such dispute, the agency shall reinvestigate, free of charge, and
record the current status of the disputed information, or delete the item
from the file in accordance with paragraph (5), before the end of the 30-day period beginning on the date on which the agency receives the notice of the dispute from the consumer.”
There are other facets of the Fair Credit Reporting Act allowing consumers to challenge the validity of their credit reports. Once a consumer challenges or disputes items on the report, it is then the onus of the creditor to respond to those disputes by validating their accuracy or deleting them from your report. These actions are rarely, if ever, done without the proactive approach of the consumer.
