Credit Reporting Agencies Contact Information

In an era where we require loans and credit facilities, credit reporting agencies play an instrumental role in keeping alive the system of credit creation. Loan lenders, creditors, landlords, clients, trade credit extenders, often resort to the data provided by credit reporting agencies to find out about the credit worthiness of a person.

What are Credit Reporting Agencies?

A credit reporting agency, also known as a credit reporting bureau, is basically a privately owned company that maintains a person's record, about his/her credit-related activities (e.g: loans and credit cards). This information is provided to the agency by lenders, bankers, credit card companies, and for that matter any person or organization that extends credit. Based upon this information the agency prepares a credit report that consists of 3 primary elements, namely a credit rating, credit score and a credit history. The credit rating and score are two alphanumeric figures that indicate a person's credit worthiness, a person's probability of defaulting or returning the loan and the time period within which a person can return a said loan. The credit history is a short summary about a person's credit related activities. To make a long story short, it is basically a report card about a person's credit activities. In the United States of America, TransUnion, Equifax and Equarian are the three prominent agencies engaged in credit reporting (though there are some other agencies as well).

It must be noted that these companies or rather agencies follow strict laws and mathematical models while churning out credit reports. A primary enactment followed by such agencies is Fair Credit Reporting Act. In addition to that, the mathematical models that are used by the agencies are developed by companies such as Beacon and Fair Issac Corporation.

How to Contact Credit Report Agencies?

There are several scenarios where people will need to contact credit reporting agencies. These situations are listed down as follows:

• To get a credit report
• To report a default or a violation
• To rectify a credit report
• Credit dispute

Logically you would be able to find credit reporting agencies contact information in the Internet. Official websites of these companies also provide helplines and email addresses of the company. However, it would be better to contact the agency through appropriate avenues as stated by these websites. If you want to request for a credit report, it is best to use official websites and the credit report options. If you want some other person's credit report, you will have to first pay a small fee and provide your identification to the agency. Apart from that, if you start requesting for credit reports on a frequent basis, you will have to go through some agreements with the agency. Credit reports, after all, are not public documents and lack of sufficient privacy and security may result in misuse of the document.

On the other hand, if you find a mistake in your credit report, you can initiate a lawful and legitimate credit dispute with the credit reporting agencies. Many agencies in fact have separate people who deal with such a dispute. The best way to initiate such a dispute is to issue a credit report dispute letter to the agency. Some agencies have also set up interdependent interfaces and templates that would enable people to get in touch with them in order to correct wrong facts that appear on the credit report.

It is also recommended that you look out for reliable and confirmed information about the agencies, before issuing any mail or document.