What is a Credit Bureau?

A credit bureau is an agency that collects information from as many consumer financial transactions or inquiries as they can. The 3 major bureaus are TransUnion, Equifax and Experion.  (Their contact info is below.)   The credit information they place in our files is obtained from companies that have previously extended credit to us.  These companies report our payment history (correctly and incorrectly, consistently and inconsistently)   to the credit bureaus.  They don’t check the accuracy of anything that is sent to them yet it all goes into our file, accurate or not, and can stay there for 7 to 10 years or longer if we don’t dispute it.  Credit bureaus are private profit-making companies who then sell access to all the information they collect to anyone who has a legally recognized permissible reason to buy it.  Their clients are credit card companies, mortgage lenders and banks, etc... who use the information in our file to determine if they should loan us money, and also what interest rates they should charge us, based on the past payment history collected by the credit bureaus.

The information that credit bureaus record and can place in our files, accurate or not, is:

• Your name and previously used names
• Your social security number
• Your current address and previous addresses
• Your phone number
• Your date of birth
• Your current employer and previous employers
• The number of credit accounts
• The balance on those accounts
• Payment habits
• Length and place of employment

Also, typically, any debt that results in legal action of any kind is also reported to the credit bureaus, such as repossessions, foreclosures, bankruptcies, tax liens, judgments and child support judgments.

Any improvement we can make to the negative info in our files can have a dramatic affect on our finances.  So don’t put up with their nonsense.  If we don’t FIGHT for better credit we won’t GET better credit because the agencies couldn’t care less.  Their clients are the people we owe money to, they get paid from them, so they don’t give a hoot about our credit files or how we are harmed by what’s in them.

Equifax
P.O. Box 740241
Atlanta, GA 30374
1-800-685-1111

Experian
P.O. Box 2002
Allen, TX 75013
1 888 397 3742

Trans Union
P.O. Box 1000
Chester, PA 19022
1-800-888-4213