Credit Report Inaccuracies

Inaccuracies on credit reports cost consumers thousands of dollars every year. Approximately 80% of Americans have inaccuracies on their credit reports. What causes these inaccuracies? How do they affect your ability to purchase with credit or obtain a job? What can you do about these inaccurate items?

A recent study by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, for example, found that four out of every five credit reports contained errors, and one in four contained errors serious enough to result in the denial of credit or denial of an employment application.

Among the major credit report accuracy findings of the survey:

Twenty-nine percent (29%) of the credit reports contained serious errors - false delinquencies or accounts that did not belong to the consumer - that could result in the denial of credit;

Forty-one percent (41%) of the credit reports contained personal demographic identifying information that was misspelled, long-outdated, belonged to a stranger, or was otherwise incorrect;

Twenty percent (20%) of the credit reports were missing major credit, loan, mortgage, or other consumer accounts that demonstrate the creditworthiness of the consumer;

Twenty-six percent (26%) of the credit reports contained credit accounts that had been closed by the consumer but incorrectly remained listed as open;

Altogether, 70% of the credit reports contained either serious errors or other mistakes of some kind. Among the survey's major access to credit report findings:

Of the consumers that did obtain their credit reports, at least 14% of them were forced to call back 3 or more times after receiving busy signals or had to write a letter in order to receive their report; and 12% of the consumers waited two weeks or longer to receive their report once they finished requesting it. It took more than a month for one California man to receive his report.

Overall, 15% of consumers who attempted to participate in the survey either made at least 3 phone calls and never got through or requested their reports but never received them.

According to a study by the Consumer Federation of America and the National Credit Reporting Association four percent of the cases showed that consumers had a margin of at least 100 points between the three credit bureau scores. The causes of these errors are many: typographical, merging of consumer information by creditors, similar names or residences of consumers, or incomplete information provided by lenders.

Doug Parker, CEO
RMCN Credit Services, Inc.
888.469.7372
http://RepairMyCreditNow.com

Teenagers and Tattoos- A Parent's Dilemma

Repeated cases of dj vu may be fact of life for those who have survived adolescence and gone on to become parents of teenagers themselves. Teenagers of every generation have a limited capacity to appreciate what changes the passage of time can bring, simply because they havent experienced much time passing.

This limited capacity is nowhere more evident than in the problem thousands of parents face everyday in dealing with their teenagers and tattoos. Teenagers cannot be held to blame if they are constantly bombarded with images of tattooed rock, movie, and sports stars, and want to grab a bit of cool for themselves.

But teenagers getting tattoos, with or without parental permission, can lead to some serious unhappiness down the road, which is exactly where teenagers are incapable of looking. Most teenagers are not good at setting priorities, so they dont realize that priorities change, and often with surprising regularity.

Teenagers with tattoos obtained because they wanted to belong to, or stand out from, the school crowd are almost certain to regret their decision when the school crowd is dispersed to the four winds and the tattoo is still shining forth. Many tattoo artists recognize this aspect of the teenagers and tattoos relationship, and will refuse to give teens tattoos.

Another factor which tattoo artists have to consider is that teenagers, even at sixteen and seventeen, have not fully matured and their physical contours may have some significant changes still ahead. No person walking the Earth truly has the carries same shape from their late teens into their late twenties, and the tattoo which was perfectly placed in adolescence can be an embarrassment a decade later.

If you are a parent facing the teenagers and tattoos dilemma, there are a few strategies you can employ in trying to guide you child to a realistic understanding of what getting a a tattoo can mean. You may not win the debate, but at least your child will not be returning in a decade or two asking, How COULD you let me do that?

First, make sure your child understands the risks involved in getting a tattoo, by asking him or her to explain them to you and indicate how he or she intends to avoid them. They include everything from the sanitation of the tattoo parlor, to the preparedness of the tattoo artist to deal with excessive bleeding, to aftercare of the tattoo to prevent infection.

If that doesnt scare your teenager just a little bit, ask him or her to estimate what a tattoo will cost, and where the money will come from. Hopefully having to earn the money will take long enough for the desire to be tattooed to subside.

Finally, explain to your teenager that you are reluctant for the tattoo to happen because you are afraid that after just six months the cool factor will be history. See if you can arrange a compromise by having you teen show you the must have tattoo design, and if he or she still thinks its a must have after six months, youll agree. The odds are excellent that even if your teen still wants a tattoo after that amount of time, it will be an entirely different tattoo. And you can simply ask Are you sure you wont change your mind again?

Even though your teen will hate the waiting, you will have avoided a confrontation, and either helped find a tattoo he or she can truly live with, or helped your teen learn to live very well without any tattoo at all.

Author: Matt Garrett - 2007 www.TopTattooDesign.Com

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