The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives you the right to dispute information in your Credit Report for accuracy and completeness.  All credit reporting agencies must investigate and update items that you dispute within a "reasonable period of time" unless the agency believes the dispute is "frivolous or irrelevant".  The credit reporting agency must delete any item, which is disputed and cannot be verified by your credit provider (Macys, Shell Oil, etc).  The credit reporting agency must correct false information or complete any item that is incomplete.

But, this is only part of the picture.  The only way to correct an error or add additional information to your Credit Report is through the Credit Reporting Repositories.  The credit reporting repositories are the main financial data bases for your credit.  They provide means for your present creditors to input monthly information on your payment history and a read-only output data for authorized credit reporting agencies or potential credit provider.  You must report any incorrect information to the Credit Reporting Repositories on their form.  It is important that you submit copies of pertinent documentation with your form. It may take 4-6 weeks for the Repositories to investigate your claim and change your credit data used to calculate future Credit Reports.

For example: a credit reporting agency can provide a Tradeline Update when there is an error or missing information on a specific Credit Report. However, you must communicate directly with the Reporting Credit Repository's to correct negative information on their data base, which will influence future credit scores.

Another example would be that if your file included an account that belongs to another person the credit reporting agency would have to delete the item.  Once again, you would have to report the problem to the Reporting Credit Repository's to influence your future credit scores