The three Major Credit Reporting Agencies all have their own way of formatting and presenting your credit report information, but they do not ‘own’ your information.
However, the process and the systems and the algorithms that are used to calculate your Credit Score and the specific data points for each CRA may be considered as proprietary.
At first glance, the only information that you might recognize on your credit report (that is of course, if all of your information is correct) is your NAME and your ADDRESS, but all the rest, it might look like a bowl of spaghetti with a bunch of numbers, letters, and unfamiliar coding crowding the pages.
To the untrained eye, all of this information may seem so confusing that a person may feel as though they are looking at a schematic diagram of an electrical system to an electric vehicle, and this may cause such a migraine that a person may decide to not go any further.
The credit report jargon is so chopped up, and at times, so obscure, that it can create lots of confusion, and can make one ask:
Is this intentional by the CRAs and the Creditors?
MY answer is… I don’t know.
What I DO KNOW is that when you add up all of the HIGH interest charges, LARGE late fees, and excessive penalties, the credit industry is BIG BUSINESS and the average consumer is not well equipped, if at all, to stand up to both the CRAs and the creditors.
Now the CRAs do make an honest attempt to include a guide to your credit report and they make a good attempt to breakdown what is inside of your credit report, section by section, and they also include a reference guide to the codes that you will find throughout your credit report.
But in my opinion, the information falls short of any helpful information, and in my opinion, seeking advice from the CRAs about correcting your credit report and raising your Credit Score, may become a conflict, considering that the CRAs are private companies, provide a paid service to creditors (which are the CRAs customers) and have the potential to get sued by YOU if something goes awry.
Of course, in fairness, many Credit Repair Companies have been rightfully accused of not playing by the rules in many cases.
Just Google ‘are credit repair companies legit’ and see what you get.
For this reason we have decided to create CreditUpDIY so that you can fix and correct any errors on your credit report on your own, and also, the very reason that we have created and have made available to you our FREE Ultimate Credit Repair Guide.
In this way, you can be well educated, and then decide for yourself, the course of action that you will take, as you move forward with your credit repair process.
It would be a herculean task for us to try and explain all the codes and jargon found on each credit report from each Credit Reporting Agency, and since they already include an explanation with your credit report, it would be quite redundant for us to try.
So, what we have decided to do is to include screen shots of SAMPLE credit reports from each Credit Reporting Agency for you to look over and study.
Take your time, as this exercise will help you to get familiar with what a credit report looks like so that you can be comfortable for when the time comes for you to review and evaluate your own credit report and then decipher what your credit report says about you.
Don’t try to decipher or memorize every single remark or every credit code. It’s enough to just recognize where certain things can be found on your credit report.
With this in mind, click the link to the specific Credit Reporting Agency below.
SAMPLE Credit Reports:
Laptop or home computer recommended for better viewing.
