If you're in need of credit repair or suspect that a company or organization has reported something about you falsely to a credit bureau, then you'll want to study the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) carefully to learn about your rights. The FCRA was developed by the federal government to promote fairness, accuracy and privacy in consumer reporting agency (CRA) reports. You do have rights as a citizen of the United States concerning your credit report, and knowing these rights can protect you from false credit reporting as well as marks against your credit due to identity theft or even simple typos!

Here's a rundown of some important consumer rights as established by the FCRA:

Disclosure of Reasons for Credit Denial

If a lender refuses to extend credit to you because of negative information on your credit report, the lender must disclose the reason to you.  Potential employers and insurance companies must also disclose the reason for denial as well as provide the contact information for the CRA from which the report was obtained.

Right to Credit Information

You have the right to find out what is in your credit file.  The CRA must provide all information pertaining to your credit history as well as a list of every company or lending institution that has requested your credit history in recent months.  These requests are called "inquiries," and too many of them can affect your credit score.  You can request your credit report free of charge from each of the three main CRAs once per year.  It can be obtained through the following government-authorized website:  www.AnnualCreditReport.com

Right to Dispute Errors on Your Credit Report

The FCRA also gives you the right to dispute incorrect items on your credit report.  For instance, you can dispute a report if you paid a certain bill on time but it was still reported as unpaid or very late.  If you have the proof to show that it was paid on time, you can get this negative mark removed from your credit report.  You must file a complaint with the CRA, and then the CRA will usually investigate and remove the inaccurate information within 30 days or so if found to be true.  The three major reporting agencies (Experian, TransUnion and Equifax) must then notify other national reporting agencies if changes are made or items are deleted from your report.  You can also dispute information with the actual creditor.  If there's a dispute, the creditor must attach the dispute with your report.

Time Limits

Negative information may not be reported to a CRA if more than seven years old, except for bankruptcies which have a limit of ten years.  This safeguards you from having "bad credit" the rest of your life and gives you an opportunity to start re-building good credit gradually.

Other Rights

Your credit information is only available to certain entities as recognized by the FCRA, such as potential employers, lenders, landlords, insurance companies and certain other businesses.  You must give written consent for a CRA to provide a report to your employer or a potential employer.  Also, medical information may not be given out without your written consent.

You also have the right to be excluded from credit card offers as well as car/health insurance offers based on your credit report.  You can tell the CRA that you want to be taken off the lists.  Also, you have a legal right to file a lawsuit against a CRA or any other entity if the FCRA is violated as pertaining to your credit report.

These are your rights under FCRA in a nutshell.  This is not a comprehensive list of rights by any means, but can give you a general idea of how FCRA works to your benefit for credit repair and/or keeping your credit history free of negative information.