You must give your permission for a report to be issued. The fact is, companies with a permissible purpose may access reports without the consumer’s direct consent. Another example is “the credit reporting agency denied me credit.” Credit reporting agencies do not deny or extended credit. They are businesses that collect and retain credit data and provide it for a fee to lenders and creditors for their review in assessing whether or not to extend credit.
“When paid, the bad debt will go away.” Because credit reports provide a history of your credit, bad debts, charge offs, late payments, judgments, etc., will stay in your credit report, in some cases, for up to 7 to 10 years. (Negative information stays on a credit report for seven years; public record information such as bankruptcy and foreclosure will stay on a credit report for up to ten years.)
Any time you are a joint account owner or cosigner, no matter if you have paid your “share” or not, both parties are held 100% responsible for the payment. In other words, if you pay your share and the other person does not, both of you will receive the same negative credit ratings. This is also true of divorce situations. A divorce does not automatically separate jointly held accounts. To ensure your protection, the accounts may need to be paid in full and closed, and if desired, reopened as a single owner account.
Despite numerous changes in the credit industry, such as credit scores and other predictive factors, credit reports are still the number one tool used to assess your credit.
