You may be entitled to a money award under the Fair Credit Reporting Act if you have errors or mixed files on your credit report.
Have you recently discovered incorrect information on your credit report? Perhaps you’ve experienced an unexpected disaster related to your credit, such as the denial of a mortgage or a car loan? You may have a claim under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).
CRAs may commonly include incorrect information from multiple parties in a single credit report, creating what is known as a “mixed credit report”. This is in violation of the FCRA, and consumers may need to rely on the abilities granted to them under the FCRA in order to repair the damage that the CRAs cause by creating a mixed credit report.
The FCRA is a series of laws designed to protect the privacy of consumer reporting information, as well as to ensure that information reported by consumer reporting agencies (CRAs, such as TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax) and companies that supply information to CRAs are as accurate as possible. In order to accomplish these goals, the FCRA provides the opportunity for consumers to hold CRAs accountable for including incorrect information on the credit reports that they produce.
With help from Consumer Attorneys, you may be able to fix credit score and mistakes in credit reports and potentially obtain compensation for damages caused by the mistakes. Write to us now, and we will explore your case for free.
Errors or Mixed Files in the Report
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) protects consumers from inaccurate or false information being reported on your credit file. The three major reporting agencies -- Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, also known as “The Big Three” – are regulated by federal laws, which extend consumers some protections from inaccurate reporting. One such inaccuracy is called a “Mixed File,” or a Mixed Credit Report.
What is a Mixed Credit Report?
A mixed credit report happens when a credit reporting agency erroneously merges one person’s credit information or even their entire credit file with the credit report of another.
Credit reporting agencies collect information about you. The three major reporting agencies -- Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion-- all have their own database where they store this information. These databases contain hundreds of millions of credit files. When someone (usually a financial entity) requests a consumer’s credit history, these companies sort through all of their data. In addition, the credit reporting agencies do not require full identifying matching procedures, so consumers are only required to provide partial identifiers to authenticate their identity, which can cause a file to be mixed with another person’s. The searches then merge all of those into a single credit report.
Reasons for a mixed credit report also include:
- Very common names, or alternatively, names that are very rare and unique
- Family members with similar names
- Faulty file retrieval process by the credit reporting agency
- Inaccurate reporting of a consumer's personal information
- Reporting agencies may not have enough information to indicate that the credit files should not "merge”
- Creditor's records contain inaccurate information such as misspelled names, street addresses, or inverted social security numbers
If you believe your credit report contains information belonging to someone else, the experienced lawyers at Consumer Attorneys can help you with this. Correcting mixed file errors can be a long process. Our legal team can help you navigate the process of correcting credit report errors. Fill out the “Contact Us” form to get started with your case.
What causes mixed credit reports?
There are many reasons why a CRA may mistakenly mix two credit reports. CRAs may mistakenly include information related to one individual in a credit report of another individual with a similar name, address, or social security number. Furthermore, lenders and creditors sometimes report information to CRAs with limited identifying information, thereby causing the CRAs to incorrectly file the information in a mixed report. Whatever the particular cause of a specific case, the result is a credit report containing information that belongs to two different consumers. The results of this can be devastating.
Why Should I Care About Mixed Credit reports?
Incorrect information contained in a mixed credit report can have potentially significant and detrimental effects, which you may not even realize until you apply for credit from a lender. Because lenders often rely heavily on the contents of a credit report to approve a loan, a mixed credit can make it appear to a lender that you have: delinquencies, excessive hard inquiries, a disproportionate debt load, or even bankruptcy discharges.
That are only listed on your credit report because the CRA mistakenly mixed another person’s credit history with your own.
This misinformation may cause the lender to only offer you credit with unsatisfactory terms. Even worse, the misinformation may cause the lender to wrongfully refuse to extend you credit altogether. Besides the obvious financial damage these cases can cause, mixed credit report can wreak havoc on an individual’s personal life, causing an immense amount of unnecessary emotional distress.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it possible to recover a monetary settlement under the FCRA?
Can Consumer Attorneys help protect my rights?