Free self-check
Is something on your credit report worth a closer look?
Open your reports, answer eight quick questions about what you see, and get an honest checklist of what's worth investigating. Free, no account — and your answers never leave your browser unless you email yourself the results.
Don't have your reports yet? They're free every week at the official site — here's the two-minute walkthrough.
Question 1 of 8
Is there an account you don't recognize?
Any card, loan, or collection you can't place — even a small one.
1. Is there an account you don't recognize?
How to check: Any card, loan, or collection you can't place — even a small one.
An account that isn't yours can mean a mixed file (the bureau merged you with someone else) or identity theft. Either way it's disputable on a truthful basis, and it's one of the most damaging errors a report can carry.
2. Are there late payments that don't match your records?
How to check: Compare the month-by-month payment grid against your own statements.
The payment grid has to match what actually happened. Lates that conflict with your statements, lates during forbearance, or lates after a payoff are specific, factual defects — exactly what the dispute process was built to correct.
3. Is there a collection with a wrong balance, or one you don't recognize?
How to check: Collections change hands constantly; the paperwork often doesn't keep up.
When a collector reports a debt it can't substantiate — wrong balance, wrong dates, thin records — that reporting is challengeable. You can demand to know how an item was verified, and 'the computer said so' doesn't count.
4. Are there negative items older than about seven years?
How to check: Ten years for most bankruptcies. Check the date of first delinquency, not the last activity date.
Most negative items have a legal maximum reporting life of seven years from the first delinquency (ten for most bankruptcies), and that clock can't be restarted by a collector. Items past the limit shouldn't be on the report at all.
5. Is any personal information wrong?
How to check: Addresses you never lived at, misspelled names, name variants, wrong employers.
Personal-information errors look harmless, but a stray address or name variant is often the thread connecting someone else's debt to your file. Cleaning up the identity section closes the door mixed files walk through.
6. Is the same debt listed by more than one collector?
How to check: Same original creditor and amount showing under two different collection agencies.
A debt should only be reported by whoever currently holds it. Two collectors reporting the same debt at once doubles the damage from a single obligation, and at least one of them is reporting it wrong.
7. Does a charged-off account still show a balance after being sold?
How to check: A charge-off that was sold to a collector shouldn't keep showing its own balance too.
Once a charged-off debt is sold, the original creditor generally shouldn't keep reporting a balance — that makes one debt look like two. Charge-offs that re-report in ways that make old damage look recent are the same family of defect.
8. Do the three bureaus disagree about the same account?
How to check: Different balances, statuses, or payment histories for one account across Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.
The bureaus keep separate records, and disagreements between them are where errors hide. At most one version can be right — which gives you a factual basis to ask each bureau to prove its version.