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Free Credit Reports Are Coming, Moving Slowly From West to East
K. Harney

Saturday, April 3, 2004; Page F01

Anyone who has bought a home or applied for a mortgage knows this hard financial reality: What is in your credit report can cost you -- or save you -- thousands of dollars in loan charges.

Lenders base their rate quotes to you on your credit score. Your credit score, in turn, is nothing more than your credit file run through an electronic risk-prediction grid.

If wrong information reduces your score, that's your problem. You need to get the bad stuff in your files corrected or deleted before you apply for a mortgage.

But how are you supposed to know that someone has botched up your credit files? One remedy is to use your right to obtain one free credit report every year from each of the three national credit bureaus -- Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. Signed into law by President Bush in December, the measure is known as the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act.

The free reports are not yet available to any of the more than 200 million American consumers who have national credit files. But the Federal Trade Commission has just proposed the key details of how and where consumers can request their free reports, and when the program will start up.

Once it becomes operational later this year, there will be a single, as-yet unnamed organization that you can contact once every 12 months by e-mail, toll-free telephone number or regular mail.

You will have to provide identifying information -- your Social Security number, name and address, at a minimum -- to get in the door. Then you will be able to request your credit reports from all three national bureaus simultaneously. The bureaus will have 15 days to send the reports to you at no charge.

When you make your request, you will also be able to order your credit scores for yet-to-be-determined fees. Congress required disclosure of the scores to any consumer who asks for them but did not require that they be free.

Under the new rules proposed by the FTC, the bureaus and their centralized credit report organization will also be able to market other credit-related services to you -- for example, automated credit-monitoring services that alert you to possible identity theft or sudden movements in your scores.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45388-2004Apr2.html?nav=lb

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