Credit Report Services – How Can They Help You?
Credit Report Services
Credit report services are popping up all over the internet with offers of screening potential tenants and or future employees.
Some are quite legitimate and if you’re an employer, landlord or property manager it may be worth your consideration.
Obviously there are fees involved for credit report services; however you could always pass this on to the applicant in the form of an application fee, thereby negating any cost to yourself. A smart move if you’re time poor.
Federal Law requires that you supply these credit report services with documentation to prove that you are indeed conducting business that warrants you receiving sensitive credit information about prospective applicants.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act makes it mandatory for credit report services to ask for particular items such as driver’s license, passport, a business license, tax ID number, or the filling out of certain application forms, depending of course on the type of business you conduct.
Beware of using any credit report services who don’t ask for this type of documentation as they may be in violation of Federal Law.
The cost of credit report services is pretty reasonable but of course it pays to shop around and do some research first. The cost in comparison to the type of information they can provide you is money well spent.
Consider the cost of training someone who turns out to have had something on their report that would have prevented you from employing them in the first place.
Or the cost involved in cleaning up or making repairs on a property or the loss of income from back-rent owed because you hadn’t done some background checking.
It is a high price to pay, especially when you can legally get your hands on information provided by credit report services at a reasonable cost.
As with any business decision, do your due diligence. There are some excellent and reputable credit report services around. However, as with all things, there are also some disreputable companies offering their services.
So do your research before signing up with a particular service and make the most of this time saving resource.
