credit & check: How do you check your credit rating free?

Saturday, July 11, 2009

How do you check your credit rating free?

DON%26#039;T use freecreditreport.com - it%26#039;s a bit of scam.

Under the FACT Act amendments to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, you are entitled to one free Personal Credit Report in a 12 month period

Use: http://www.annualcreditreport.com.

UPDATE:

By the way, thanks to Mrs. Thang and Credit Guru for echoing my comments above. There is some bad info in Credit Guru閳ユ獨 answer that I must address. Going to any of the credit reporting company%26#039;s websites or myfico.com and ordering and paying for what they represent as your credit %26quot;score%26quot; is another scam the bureaus are using just to get money from you. I have had customers sit at a computer in my office and purchase this report %26quot;WITH SCORE%26quot; and 3 minutes later, pull a tri-merge credit report for mortgage purposes (what anyone who is going to evaluate your credit is going to do) and the numbers were SIGNIFICANTLY different (in most cases, lower). If you read the fine print in the scored report that they give you, they tell you that the %26quot;model used to deliver the score to you [the consumer] may be different than the scoring model given to a company evaluation your credit worthiness.%26quot;

AND... since each credit bureau has a patent on their credit scoring formulas, they are not legally obligated to disclose to anyone exactly how they came up with the score (nice, huh?). The only information that credit bureaus are required to disclose to you the consumer under the provisions of the Fair Credit Reporting Act is the information REPORTED TO THEM BY CREDITORS (in other words, they are required to tell you [the consumer] that %26quot;Chase Visa (or whoever)%26quot; is reporting a balance of $xxx, a payment of $yyy and that you%26#039;ve been late 3 times in the last year. They are, however, not required to disclose to the consumer THIER (the credit bureau閳ユ獨) OPINION OF YOUR CREDIT WORTINESS (as represent by the score they report to the creditor)).

There is hope though. If you REALLY want to know what your credit score is, go see a mortgage broker and apply for a loan (Applying for a mortgage in no way obligates you to take a mortgage). As a professional courtesy, it閳ユ獓 be nice for you to disclose that 閳ユ竼ven though you are applying or a mortgage, you閳ユ獧e mostly just interested in your score and may change your mind about the mortgage once you see your credit report.閳?br>

Thanks to recent changes in the Fair Credit Reporting Act, creditors (ie: the mortgage broker you went to see) who pull your credit for evaluation are no longer prohibited from showing you what they found (which was a shady part of the law in the first place if you ask me!). In fact, we%26#039;re REQUIRED to disclose to you EXACTLY what your scores are and the range of scores for each repository reported (as well as a lot of other valuable information). This will be your score as creditors see it and THE only accurate representation of how you%26#039;re being represented by the bureaus to the creditors.

These are facts and are accurate based upon my experience of helping hundreds of consumers fix their credit and qualify for mortgages.

Sorry it%26#039;s so long but the truth needed to be told.