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Your Credit Score - Knowing Your Rights

Your credit score plays a major role in credit approval or denial. It also determines your interest rates. A low score can mean that you will pay hundreds or thousands more in interest than that of a person with a good to excellent credit score. Knowing your rights regarding your credit score will help you to know how to better deal with organizations that make decisions based on your credit score.

The FCRA created provisions allowing access to your credit score for a reasonable fee. This reasonable fee access only applies to the three major credit reporting agencies - Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. FACTA does not provide you with the right to obtain a free credit score. You are able to access your score for a reasonable fee, although FACTA does not currently define what is meant by a reasonable fee. FACTA does allow everyone to receive a free credit report from the three major credit reporting agencies once a year.

FACTA does not give you the right to retrieve your FICO score. FACTA provides you with the right to obtain only two types of credit scores. The educational score shows how scoring works and how you rate as to creditworthiness. A mortgage score is used when trying to obtain residential real property loans. If you are denied a mortgage loan, then you are entitled to receive your mortgage score for free.

Some confuse their right to dispute their actual credit report with that of disputing a credit score. You are unable to dispute your credit score. However, you should regularly check your credit report and dispute any discrepancies in your credit report. Many people are surprised at how many errors their credit report contains. If you dispute items on your credit report that you know to be incorrect, most likely they will be removed. Correcting errors will most likely improve your credit score.

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