Your rights
Your credit rights
A plain-language summary of rights under federal law. This page is general information, not legal advice. For the official text, see the sources at the bottom of this page.
Your credit reports
- You can get free copies of your credit reports from the three nationwide credit reporting companies at AnnualCreditReport.com.
- You can dispute inaccurate or incomplete information directly with a credit reporting company at no cost. It generally must investigate within 30 days.
- If a dispute doesn’t resolve the issue, you can ask that a brief statement explaining your view be added to your file.
- Accurate negative information can generally be reported for seven years, and some bankruptcies for ten years.
- Neither you nor any credit repair company has the right to have accurate, current, and verifiable information removed from your credit report.
If you hire a credit repair company
- Before you sign, it must give you a written statement of your rights under federal law.
- It must give you a written contract describing the services, the total cost, and how long the services will take.
- It may not charge you before the agreed services are fully performed.
- You can cancel the contract for any reason within three business days of signing. Some states provide longer periods; in Florida, the contract must allow cancellation until midnight of the fifth day after the transaction.
- It may not make false or misleading claims, or advise you to give false information to credit reporting companies or creditors.
- You can sue a credit repair company that violates the Credit Repair Organizations Act.