Starting around December 2004, you are entitled to get a copy of your credit report for free one time per year in almost all states. So why are so few people taking advantage of this service, which used to cost about $7.50 to get a copy of your report? It is because not everyone knows that their credit report contains more errors that it is worth. Thats right, it contains errors, and the number of errors it contains is anybodys guess. The reason for this is the sheer volume of data that the credit bureaus need to process and keep track of. And then one lender who had a contract with say Experian changes their contract so that now they report to Equifax, and the problem becomes even greater. I mean, think about it for just a second. If you add together all consumers and all businesses in the US, then add at least one record for each loan or credit card account they currently have or ever have had, you arrive at an incredible number which represents BILLIONS of records. That is a system administrators nightmare but it is the job they took on. Now if only 1% of that database is in error, then that means that there are MILLIONS of records with errors, and the actual percentage shown in recent studies if more than 25% are in error! Something that most consumers are not aware of is they THEY have the responsibility for making sure that those errors get corrected. They do not self-correct over time. The only way will ever get fixed so that the right data is showing is if YOU dispute the data with the credit bureaus. And you need to do it separately with each credit bureau TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian because all three of them probably have different errors! Now the thing that results by having inaccurate data in your credit history profile in that your credit score is not calculated correctly. Your credit score, sometimes also known as a FICO score, is a number that the credit bureaus have come up with as a quick way to gauge your credit worthiness. Although your credit score may be higher than it should be based on these errors, chances are greater that your credit score is worse than it should be. You need to get those errors and get that negative information removed. How do you do that? You start by getting yourself a copy of your credit report, and get a separate report from each agency. Read through the report very carefully and note anything that is wrong or is in error. Then file a dispute letter. After you have filed a dispute form with the credit bureau, they then have 30 days to either verify the information as being accurate, or deleting it from your credit report. The thing that makes that decision is whether or not the lender verifies the information as being accurate, or just plain does not respond. If this is an account that has been paid off for several years, even though you had some problems with the account early on, the lender may just not take the time to respond at all, in which case the data needs to be deleted. Now there is the question of the stuff that is REALLY in error, instead of just the stuff that while technically accurate, still reflects poorly on you. But with this, the procedure to file a dispute is exactly the same, and the credit bureaus have those same 30 days to either prove the information or to remove it from your credit report. After all of this, you should have a credit report that reads the way you want it to read, and that will result in your credit score being as high as it can be.