How to fix missing information on your credit report

If you have missing information on your credit reports – don’t worry. There are a number of reasons this info could be missing from your report, but in most cases they are all simple enough to fix.

Depending on what is missing, it could have quite the impact on your credit report and overall credit score. It is important to consider this impact as you report the missing information to the credit bureau.

Credit reports contain a lot of information regarding your credit history and payment patterns. This information can either help or hurt your overall credit score, making it more or less likely that lenders will work with you.

Information such as on time or late payments or your overall payment history plays a big role in your credit score, and may be more likely to go missing, simply because there are so many of them.

There are a few reasons this info goes missing.

Sometimes this information goes missing due to human error on the part of the creditor. They may forget to report the information to the credit bureaus, making it not show up when the bureau pulls your report. In other cases, the bureau themself may make the mistake, failing to add the note to your report.

The missing information may also be a misstep between the bureau themselves and the service you use to review your credit reports. Sometimes these services may not have the most up-to-date data, or may have forgotten to add in the data they receive.

Creditors also do not have to report your payment history to the credit bureaus. Some may report to only one bureau, some to two, and others to all three. Others creditors may not report to any bureaus. It is up to them to decide.

If you see info that shows up on one credit bureau’s report but not the others, it may be simply that the creditor only reports to that particular bureau.

If the data you are looking for has been part of a dispute, it may simply be that it has been removed. If you dispute a payment or account and it was removed, it makes sense that it no longer shows up on your credit report.

In any case, if you find missing credit in, you should evaluate the type of information that is missing and how it will affect your credit report. Your overall credit score will also be an important tool to help you gauge the value of the missing information.

People with great credit may be less inclined to follow up on some types of missing information.

For instance, payments are some of the most common items on a credit report, and they are also some of the most likely to go missing.

Yet for a person with great credit who has been regularly paying their balances on time, it may not be worth the time and effort to report missing small bits of information such as a single payment.

For larger bits of information, such as charged off accounts or new credit lines, absolutely report them to the bureau.

People who are working on repairing their credit should definitely report missing information to the bureau. First determine where the mistake is; the bureau, creditor, or the platform you use to view your credit.

This is simple enough. First reach out to the creditor to be sure they report to the bureau. Some may not, and they do not have to. However, if you are trying to repair your credit, you may want to consider switching to a creditor who reports to the bureau to increase your good payment history.

If they do report to the bureau, reach out to the bureau to ask them to check the information on your report. If they find missing information they will remedy the situation quickly.

However, if the missing piece of information is derogatory, such as a missed payment, you may consider not reporting it at all. While this may make for a more complete picture of your credit history, it may also unnecessarily hurt your credit score.

In most cases, a bit of missing information on your credit report is not going to make or break your credit score. With that said, if you are working to repair your credit, it may be best to find where the info is missing and work to correct the mistake.