Have you ever checked your credit report and been incredibly surprised by what you see? Whether it’s just that you expected your credit score to be higher, or that you see something on your report that you don’t recognize, or even something else. It can be difficult to navigate your credit score and figure out what everything means, what affects your score, and how to read it. If there’s something on your credit report that you don’t recognize, though, is there anything you can do about it?
Call your bank
Depending on what on your credit report you are confused about, you may be able to call your bank to get a bit of clarity. For example, if your credit report is showing either an opened or closed account with your bank that you don’t recognize, your bank will be the best person to contact. When an account is closed, the bank is required to make a note of why the account was closed. An account closing will hurt your credit, but also recklessly opening accounts will affect your credit. So you can call your bank and see what happened on their end.
Call the credit reporting company
If there is something on your credit report that just isn’t adding up and you know isn’t accurate, you should call the credit reporting company and ask them how they got that addition to your report. They’ll be able to tell you how they got the information to make up your credit report. And if it is incorrect, you can contest it and have them remove it from your report altogether.
If there is something incorrect on your credit report, you don’t want to ignore it! Most credit discrepancies will stay on your report for upwards of 4 years. So if you see something that doesn’t look right, look into it and make sure it is actually supposed to be there! If not, get it removed.