Credit Accounts May Not Appear on Credit Report

Dear WRB,

Although Experian would like every credit account to be reported, creditors are not required to report account information to the credit reporting companies. The U.S. credit reporting system is completely voluntary. Federal laws, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act, specify requirements for lenders if they choose to report your account information.

In addition to meeting requirements of federal and state laws, in order for a company to report credit accounts, they must also first become an Experian subscriber.

If a creditor does choose to report their accounts, they may choose to report to only one or two of the credit reporting companies, and not all three.

Credit-like agreements such as utility service or cellular telephone payments are not typically reported to the national credit reporting companies. If you were including those kinds of payments in your question, you likely won't see them in your credit report.

Always review your report carefully. In some cases, an account may be appearing under a different business name than the one you know it by. For example, it may be reported using an abbreviated form of the business name, or under the name of the bank used to finance the account, rather than the name of the retail store.

If you have already obtained a copy of your credit report directly from Experian and have verified that the accounts in question are not appearing, contact your creditors directly to inquire whether or not they report to any of the credit reporting companies.

Thanks for asking.
The "Ask Experian" team