TL;DR
- Great Lakes violated the CARES Act by incorrectly reporting that many student loan borrowers had missed payments
- If your credit score dropped as a result, take these steps to fix it immediately:
- File a dispute with the credit bureaus
- File a dispute with Great Lakes
- To check your score and see what is impacting your credit, sign up for a free credit monitoring account with Credit Sesame
According to the CARES Act, federal student loan payments, interest, and collections are automatically suspended for all borrowers from March 13 – September 30, 2020. This means that you will not need to do anything, and your credit score should not be impacted as a result. However, Great Lakes Education Loan Services incorrectly reported to the credit bureaus that many student loan borrowers had “missed” payments during this time, causing their credit scores to drop.
So if you have a student loan with Great Lakes, you should check your credit report and score immediately to see if you have been impacted by this misreporting and have it corrected.
Here’s what you should do next…
To check your score and what is impacting your credit, you can sign up for a free credit monitoring account with Credit Sesame. Credit Sesame will also provide you with credit monitoring alerts, to help you stay on top of your credit.
Do you see issues with your credit report?
If your credit report shows a missed payment with Great Lakes or other errors, we advise taking the following steps:
1. File a dispute with the credit bureaus
The credit data in your Credit Sesame account is provided by TransUnion. To dispute an error, we recommend contacting TransUnion directly via their website or by calling toll free 800-916-8800. Once you submit a report, they 30 days to investigate. If the bureau finds the information your credit report to be inaccurate or unverifiable, it will be removed or corrected.
2. File a dispute directly with Great Lakes
You can also file a dispute directly with Great Lakes. By law, you have a right to dispute the accuracy of any information on your credit report with the company that reported the information. All you need to do is send a letter disputing the specified information. The creditor Great Lakes, will then be required to investigate your claim.
Bottom Line
To stay on top of your credit score and alerts, sign up for Credit Sesame. It’s completely free and takes only 90 seconds to sign up.
