If you have inaccuracies or difficult listings on your credit report, you may have considered the credit repair decision. The Fair Credit Reporting Act or the FCRA was enacted back in’79 to “promote the fairness, accuracy and privacy of personal information on credit reports”. This law also allows consumers to dispute information on their credit reports, which is important because it is probable that as many as 75% of all credit reports contain inaccuracies and erroneous credit.

The FCRA gave you the right to dispute the errors on your account. After receiving the dispute the credit bureaus and lenders have a certain total of time to bear out the legitimacy of the information or it must be removed from your account. Credit repair can be accomplished on your own or you can take on the services of a professional credit repair company.

Be alert however, that the Federal Trade Commission states clearly on their website that “No one can legally remove accurate and timely information from a credit report. The law allows you to ask for an investigation of information in your file that you dispute as inaccurate or incomplete”.

On the surface, this announcement seems quite clear-cut. This is one basis why the critics of credit repair and credit repair services try to tell you that there is little that you can do about your bad credit and any attempts to repair your credit may be wasted. The fact is that you can do quite a bit when it comes to repairing your credit.

Even thought the FTC statement seems quite clear-cut, there is quite a bit of vagueness in the quote when it comes to real credit reports and real situations. Up to 75% of all credit reports are deemed to include mistakes. Since this is the case, credit repair companies essentially offer a effective service. Of course, you can do it yourself and you may want to think about that but it does take time and energy and if you already have a busy life you may not want to undertake a major endeavor like that on your own.

Since “accurate and timely” information should not be removed from a credit report, what are the criteria to identify “accurate and timely”? Many times miscommunications or mistakes crop up between consumers and lenders and something that may be considered “accurate” may not be that at all.

Commonly, there are items that show up on a credit report that are utterly mistaken. Listings showing on your report that belong to someone else, are duplicate entries, are the outcome of identity theft or have been listed longer than 7 years, are patently wrong and need to be removed from your account. These types of items regularly show up on credit reports.

As a consumer you also have the right to dispute any item that you think is misleading, ambiguous, unverifiable, biased or questionable. Rarely there may even be issues that the lender feels are true but you were never able to protect yourself with your side of the account. One basis why it is so fundamental that a consumer can dispute harmful listings is because of the fact that there are always two sides to a story. You can dispute anything showing on your report that is inaccurate, untimely, misleading, incomplete, ambiguous or questionable either on your own or by employing a trained credit repair service.

Repairing your credit may well become crucial at some point. If you need further information about your credit repair visit http://724Credit.com and don’t forget to sign up for a free credit repair course.