Why you need your report, not just your score

A credit report is the full record the bureaus keep on you: every account, every balance, every payment, every collection, and every inquiry. Your score is calculated from it. Checking only the score is like reading your grade without seeing which answers were marked wrong.

What a report shows that a score cannot

• Accounts that are not yours. Mixed files, a relative with the same name, or outright identity theft.
• Wrong balances and dates. A paid collection still showing a balance, or a delinquency dated later than it happened, which keeps it on your file longer.
• Duplicate collections. The same debt sold and re-listed by two agencies, counting against you twice.
• Obsolete items. Entries past their legal reporting window that should have aged off already.
• Differences between bureaus. Equifax, Experian and TransUnion often hold different data, and a lender might pull the worst one.

Checking it will not hurt you

Pulling your own report is a soft inquiry. It has no effect on your score, no matter how many times you do it. The hard inquiries that matter are the ones lenders run when you apply for credit.

What to do when you find something wrong

You have the right under the Fair Credit Reporting Act to challenge inaccurate, misleading and obsolete items. You can do that yourself, and the law gives you exactly the same standing we have. What we bring is speed and persistence: certified specialists who dispute all three bureaus at once and re-challenge anything that gets verified back onto your file.

Start by getting all three reports, then read every line. If something looks wrong, it probably is.