Adding a writen statement to your credit report

Melody Warnick wrote a couple of great articles at Creditcards.com on adding a written statement to your credit card statement.

The first article is on how to add a written statement to your credit report. What is a statement? "A provision of the Fair Credit Reporting Act allows you to add comments to your credit report that can cover 'any number of items or topics they wish,' according to Steven Katz, a spokesman for credit bureau TransUnion.

Why do you want a statement? For a variety of reasons, but as yours truly said in the story "Filing a statement shows that the consumer is educated about their rights, and that's what debt collectors try to avoid. They can't collect money as easily from people asserting their rights."

Basically, if you start asserting your rights, debt collectors will move on more often than not. Debt collectors generally want to get money from the easy consumer who will just pay. Once you make them work for it, most debt collectors go away.

The second article has sample consumer credit report statements. There are a variety of statements and you should read them to see if you find one to fit your situation.

Great work by Melody.