Back in February, I remember watching a report on 60 Minutes titled 40 Million Mistakes: Is your credit report accurate? The piece focused on a study that indicated that as many as 40 million consumers have a mistake on their credit reports. Correspondent Steve Kroft talked to several individuals who discussed just how hard it is to get any of the credit bureaus to fix mistakes, especially Experian.

Let’s start off here with a look into one of the fastest growing crimes in the United States to date, identity theft. In order to properly and effectively monitor your credit report and your identity it is absolutely critical that you first understand identity theft from the traditional methods, all the way up to the more sophisticated digital, or on line methods. The idea here being that an identity thief is less apt to try and exploit a population of consumers that are well informed. Here are some statistics that will help you build a more broad understanding of the epidemic:

Experian, Transunion, and Equifax are the three companies that dominate the credit reporting market, tracking the financial prowess of US consumers. 60 Minutes: 2013 FTC Credit Reporting Study 60 Minutes investigated the stunning number of errors on consumer credit reports and how to make credit report disputes to Equifax, Transunion, and Experian. This information is sold to everyone from employers to insurance companies and creditors.

Looking at it from more of a micro point of view, it is estimated that roughly 19 consumers will fall victim to this crime every minute. On the average, it is approximated that it will take the average casualty 500 dollars and upwards of 30 hours to straighten out each individual account where an identity theft has occurred. Unfortunately, research has revealed that it is becoming more and more ordinary for criminals to actually prey on the individuals that they are closest to, an uncle or a grandparent perhaps.

„It’s a pretty high error rate,“ Leibowitz observed. 60 Minutes: Fair Credit Reporting Act Mike DeWine, the Ohio attorney general, is investigating the credit reporting industry as well, and he thinks the findings are only going to make consumers more angry. He believes that the companies are violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act. „If you believe that there is a mistake, you can go to them and they have an obligation to do a reasonable investigation.

The agent was definitely American and he seemed apologetic and happy to help. He asked what exactly I wanted to dispute and had me hold for about three minutes. He then came back and said that I should receive an email response within 14-21 days. I didn’t expect much and after reading other horror stories, I anticipated calling back in after three weeks passed.

Note, there are some pretty horrible stories about getting an agent on the phone who can actually assist if you’re rejected online…unless you are a „current customer“, not one who has accessed your report via annualcreditreport or via a 3rd party website. It’s probably worth the $1 trial, to avoid this just remember to cancel before the 7 days are up, it doesn’t impact the investigation.

According to Kroft, „it’s extremely unlikely that anyone with the authority to resolve your dispute will ever actually see it.“

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