There has been three Major Credit Bureaus for many years. The names of the three bureaus are: Equifax, Trans Union and Experian. Equifax is located in Atlanta, GA and they have a location in El Paso, TX. by the name of CSC. Trans Union is located in Chester, PA with another location in Fullerton, CA. Experian is located in Allen, TX and has other offices located in different states under the name of Credit Data Services. There are many substations that are linked with each Major Credit Bureau but the major credit bureaus are the holders of the most updated information. The substations only get what the Major Credit Bureaus give them. There seems to be a new Credit Bureau that has just jumped on the Credit Reporting Train as if there was not enough credit stress already.
The three major credit bureaus feed information to hundreds of credit substations across the U.S. The problem is that unless the substations update their information daily the information they retain is not up to date. This is seen a lot when people go to a mortgage company and the mortgage company runs a credit report through companies such as Landsafe, Credco or a host of other companies who offer these third party credit reports. In other words most mortgage companies and auto finance companies are getting your credit file from a third party so the report is only going to be as updated as often as the third party updates their files.
Unless you are getting a credit report directly from the credit bureau there is a risk the credit report is not up to date. The bad thing about all this is that if you are trying to get a loan and the third party company your lender is getting their reports from is not up to date (especially when you are working on cleaning up your credit) you could get stuck with a higher interest rate simply because the report was not updated. Most of the time the report will take up to thirty days to update at these third party companies.
Even the reports you find on line that are merged with all three bureaus will have only one report that is update to date and that would be the credit bureau that is hosting the merged credit reports ... for example, Experian hosts the website www.truecredit.com if you get a merged file from this site the only report that is guaranteed to be as updated as possible would be Experian's own report. Trans Union and Equifax could be a full thirty days behind on what is showing in this merged file.
If you want the most accurate and up to date information on your credit reports and you want to obtain your reports from the internet your best option will be to go to each individual credit bureau and buy the report from their site. Equifax website is www.equifax.com, Experian website is www.experian.com and Trans Union website is www.transunion.com. We have listed several locations on our Credit Reports Page where you can obtain credit reports. These companies are not affiliated with Credit Clean so please read their offers before getting your reports. We have also given you information on how to get the reports the old fashioned way.
Credit Bureaus are for profit companies. They make money from the creditors who are members with them (most of your creditors are members) and they make money from the activity that runs through their bureaus, such as a credit inquiry.
Credit Bureaus are not governmental and they are not congressional. They are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission and the guidelines used are in the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
Credit Bureaus do not work together nor do they share information between themselves which is why all three credit reports show different credit information.
Credit Bureaus are a repository that holds a lot of personal information about each one of us and they get most of the information from your creditors who gets the information from you when you fill out a credit application. Public record items such as lien, judgments, divorce etc are obtained by the credit bureaus through a search of public record files.
In other words nearly your whole life is wrapped up in a package and deposited in to the banks of the three credit bureaus. Scary isn't it? But this is how our credit system is set up so we have to deal with it.
Most people think that the credit bureaus put the information on the credit reports. This is not the case for the most part. Yes, credit bureaus can hunt down and add public record information to your reports but your creditors are reporting the accounts to each credit bureau. A creditor does not have to be a member of all three bureaus; he can be a member of just one, or two or all three. A creditor has to pay money to the credit bureau to be a member so this is a heavy expense to some of the smaller companies. It's optional in other words and so is reporting credit at all. There are no rules or regulations that state anywhere that a creditor must report your credit information to a credit bureau it is just a thing that all creditors do. They even tell you that they have to report the information to the credit bureaus when in fact it is most likely the rules of the company they work for since there is no rule that credit must be reported to anyone.
Since a creditor can report credit to which ever credit bureau they want this causes your credit reports to show different information and creditors AND it is the reason why your credit scores will differ from credit report to credit report. This is why a mortgage company will use your median score as the credit score. For example: The mortgage company pulls your reports and scores from Equifax and the score is 680. They pull your Trans Union score and it is a 700 then they pull your Experian score and it is a 750. The mortgage company will use the 700 as your median score and this is what the interest rate will be based on.
There may be a new credit bureau coming aboard as if life wasn't already stressful. Just because information is reported to a credit bureau does not mean the information is accurate and for the most part there are guidelines being broken all the time when information is reported to a credit bureau. The guidelines are not being broken by just your creditors but also the credit bureaus. This is why keeping an eye on your credit reports and challenging things that have errors is an important part of you future.
