Is Your Credit Report Accurate? Look for These Six Common Types of Errors

By The Kim Law Firm, LLC

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) is a federal law that regulates the collection, dissemination, and use of consumer credit information. It provides consumers with rights, such as the ability to dispute errors on their credit reports. Unfortunately, too many people have inaccurate adverse information on their credit report. You can challenge errors. Here are six common types of errors to look for in your credit report; the credit report errors page covers how a claim works.

1. Someone Else’s Account (Identity Theft or Mixed File)

Your credit report may show accounts that belong to someone else. It could be due to identity theft or a mixed file, such as a credit report from someone with a similar name. These errors can damage your credit score and, in some cases, make you responsible for debts that are not yours. You should absolutely dispute your credit report if someone else’s account ends up in your file. 

2. Inaccurate Late/Missed Payment

A credit report may wrongly show a late or missed payment on an account you paid on time. These errors can dramatically lower your credit score. It could even adversely affect your ability to get approved for credit. Here is a key point to know: Lenders rely heavily on payment history—and that means that even one false late payment can be costly. How to dispute a late payment you never made covers that case step by step.

One version of this error deserves its own warning: a payment made a week or two after the due date, reported as “30 days late.” That payment was late in the ordinary sense, and a late fee may be fair, but it was not 30 days late. The reporting format lenders and bureaus use has no category for a payment that was days late — an account is reported as “current” until it is 30 days past due, and the first delinquency bucket is 30 to 59 days — so an account brought current before it reached 30 days should be reported as current. A “30 days late” entry for it is inaccurate — and that is as true of a payment received 29 days after the due date as of one received five days after it, because the entry describes a threshold the account never crossed. The Third Circuit, which covers Pennsylvania and New Jersey, reads an entry the way a reasonable reader would: “30 days late” means a month, not a week. Dispute it with the bureau with the record of the date the payment was received.

3. Incorrect Balance Information

Your credit report might list the wrong balance on one or more of your accounts. It could make it seem like you owe more than you actually do. That would harm your credit utilization ratio, which plays a big role in your credit score. A higher reported balance may make lenders see you as a higher risk.

4. Account Status Wrong

A credit account may be incorrectly marked as open when it was closed, or vice versa. Other status errors include showing an account as delinquent, charged off, or in collections when it is actually in good standing. You should make sure that the status of all of the accounts that are listed on your credit report is accurate. 

5. Errors Related to Public Records

Public records matter. You should make sure that you take a look at all the records listed on your report for accuracy. Public records like bankruptcies, liens, or judgments may be reported incorrectly on your credit file. In some cases, they may belong to someone else or may have been dismissed but still appear as active.

6. Outdated Adverse Information (Should Already Be Removed)

Negative information—such as late payments or outstanding debt collections—should automatically be removed after a certain number of years. If outdated data remains on your credit report, it can unfairly lower your credit score. Credit reporting agencies have a responsibility to make sure that information is removed when it should be. 

When the error survives the dispute: the clock, and what I do

Each of the six errors above is fixed the same way when the dispute works and becomes a claim the same way when it does not: dispute in writing with the bureau, attach the document that proves the error, keep the delivery receipt, and keep the result. A bureau that “verifies” an entry your documents contradict, or a lender or collector that keeps reporting it after the bureau forwarded your dispute, has failed the investigation the Act requires. An FCRA claim must be filed within two years of the day you discovered the violation, and never more than five years after it happened. I review the file at no cost and bring these cases on contingency: you pay nothing unless we win.

Admitted in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; available to appear pro hac vice in other federal courts.

Sources: 15 U.S.C. §§ 1681c, 1681e(b), 1681i, 1681n, 1681o, 1681p and 1681s-2 (United States Code); Consumer Data Industry Association, Metro 2 Format (account status 11 “current” and 71 “30–59 days past due”); Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Key Dimensions and Processes in the U.S. Credit Reporting System (December 2012); Bibbs v. Trans Union LLC, 43 F.4th 331 (3d Cir. 2022).

The same errors recur at the same companies

Credit report errors are not evenly distributed. Mixed files cluster where two consumers share a name and a partial identifier, duplicate tradelines cluster where accounts are transferred or resold, and status errors cluster at issuers with large portfolios and heavy monthly reporting volume. Reading your report with the specific company in mind is more productive than reading it generally, because the type of mistake you are looking for depends on who is furnishing the entry.

• Experian — where a mixed file most often has to be untangled first.
• Equifax — a nationwide bureau whose matching logic produces its own errors.
• TransUnion — the third bureau, which frequently reports a different picture.
• Innovis — a fourth bureau most consumers never check.
• Chase — a large issuer where status and balance errors surface at scale.
• Wells Fargo — reports across cards, auto and mortgage product lines.

Order all three reports rather than one, since an error present at a single bureau tells you the problem is in that bureau’s file assembly rather than in what the furnisher sent. Then read each entry for four fields specifically: the account status, the balance, the date of first delinquency, and the payment history grid. Those four are where nearly every actionable inaccuracy lives, and a dispute that identifies the wrong field by name is far more likely to produce a real reinvestigation than a general request to verify the account.