Originally passed in 1970 and amended multiple times since, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) was created to require credit bureaus to function in a way that is fair and equitable to consumers while still fulfilling the needs of lenders and others who use the information in your credit files. The Fair Credit Reporting Act set out to make credit reporting more fair for consumers by ensuring the personal and financial information contained by credit bureaus is accurate, relevant, kept confidential, and only made available under certain circumstances. It is the Fair Credit Reporting Act that made possible a consumer's ability to repair their credit.
The part of the Fair Credit Reporting Act that credit repair primarily focuses on is the accuracy of information. This is the one trait of the four where the burden of ensuring fair credit falls to the consumer. With the other three, it is the credit reporting agencies that are responsible for what types of information get included in credit reports, how this information is provided to third parties, and which third parties have access to it. But with regards to accuracy, the Fair Credit Reporting Act does not force the credit bureaus to prove that information is correct when it is first added to your credit reports. Instead, the Act gives you the ability to dispute any questionable information in your credit reports, making it up to you to ensure the information in your credit reports is a fair representation of your credit worthiness.
Manytend to miss this point. They focus solely on the narrow definition of inaccurate reporting and can't see the broader idea of fairness that the Act is really about. They persist in preching that people are only able to work to remove or correct listings that are patently inaccurate even though years of case law have expanded the definition of inaccurate negative items to also include items that are untimely, misleading, incomplete, ambiguous, unverifiable, biased or unclear (collectively known as "questionable" items).
Your credit score is based on the data recorded in your credit file. If you do not feel this credit score is a fair depiction of your actual credit worthiness, it is your responsibility to work to remedy this. Disputing the questionable negative items in your credit reports with the credit reporting agencies is the method made available by the
Fair Credit Reporting Act for you to enforce your right to fair credit reporting.
Lexington Law helps clients legally dispute the questionable negative listings in their credit reports as well as providing additional
credit repair services extending beyond
credit bureau disputes. In 2008, Lexington Law's clients saw over 600,000 negative items removed from their credit reports.