The eight files, and who reads each one

A consumer has more than one file. The Fair Credit Reporting Act covers every company that assembles information about you and sells it to someone deciding whether to lend, rent, insure or open an account, and there are more of those companies than three.

The rule people misread is that "your credit report" is one document. It is one document at each of three companies, and beside those three sit at least five others that lenders and banks read for specific decisions. Which means: an item can be wrong on a file you have never seen and still cost you the account.

1. Experian, Equifax, TransUnion

The nationwide bureaus. A mortgage lender pulls all three and scores the middle. Each is free once a week at annualcreditreport.com. Which means: these are the ones you pull first, on the same day, so they can be compared.

2. Innovis

The fourth bureau. Smaller, used by some lenders for verification and by some furnishers that do not report to the big three. Free by request from Innovis directly. Which means: a mixed file or an old address can live here after the other three are clean.

3. LexisNexis

Not a credit bureau in the usual sense: an aggregator of public records, addresses, phone numbers, insurance claims and identity data. Lenders' verification vendors read it; so do insurers. Free once a year by request. Which means: this is where the wrong address and the alias that is not yours tend to originate.

4. ChexSystems

Checking and savings account history: closed-for-cause accounts, overdrafts sent to collection, returned checks. Banks read it before opening a deposit account. Free by request. Which means: a person with a clean credit file can still be refused a checking account, and this is why.

5. Early Warning Services

Owned by the large banks; the other deposit-account file. Reports account abuse and fraud indicators to member banks. Free by request. Which means: the same denial as ChexSystems, from a different desk.

6. NCTUE

The National Consumer Telecom and Utility Exchange. Phone, cable, internet and utility payment history, read by those industries when you apply for service. Free by request. Which means: the cable account at the apartment you left is on this file whether or not it ever reached the bureaus.

What the law gives you on each

Section 1681j entitles you to a free disclosure from each nationwide and nationwide specialty agency once every twelve months on request, and the dispute rights in § 1681i apply to every one of them. The request process differs by company; the CFPB keeps the current list with instructions.

I wrote the eight on index cards and laid them on the church table in two rows: the three a mortgage reads, and the five a bank, a landlord, a utility or a verification vendor reads. The second row is the one nobody pulls.

What to do instead of pulling three

Pull all eight once, dated the same week, before any application that matters. Read the personal-information section of each first, then the accounts. Jenavieve's New Year piece has the order she does it in.

QualifyReady reads all eight files and compares them. You send the letters. Step one, today: request the five specialty files, because they arrive by mail and take a week or two. Know your file before your lender does.