Credit Report Dispute in Canada: How to Fix Equifax and TransUnion Errors for Free

By the FixMyCredit.ca editorial team · Published June 30, 2026 · Last updated October 22, 2026

A credit report dispute is how you get a wrong entry on your Equifax or TransUnion file investigated and fixed, and in Canada it costs nothing. The two bureaus keep separate files, lenders report to one or both, and neither bureau tells the other what it corrected, so most people end up filing the same correction twice. This guide covers both bureaus on one page: the errors worth disputing, the exact documents each bureau asks for, where to send them, how long each one takes, what to do when the answer is no, and which provincial office takes the complaint after that.

What is a credit report dispute in Canada?

A credit report dispute is a formal request asking a credit bureau to investigate an entry you believe is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date. Canada has two national bureaus, Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada. Each keeps its own file on you, each builds its own score from that file, and a lender can pull either one when you apply. When something on a file is wrong, the dispute is the tool that fixes it.

The right to dispute is written into provincial consumer reporting law, and the bureaus must act on it at no charge. You file directly with the bureau, the bureau checks with the company that reported the entry, and anything that company cannot confirm is corrected or deleted. You do not need a lawyer or a credit repair company to do this, and nobody can do it faster for a fee.

What a credit report dispute cannot do matters just as much. It does not erase accurate negative history. A late payment that really happened stays until it ages off, which our guide on how to remove late payments explains in dates. The dispute removes information that is wrong: an account that is not yours, a balance paid months ago still showing as owing, a code that overstates how late you were, or an entry that should have purged a year ago and did not.

Which errors are worth a credit report dispute?

Read both reports line by line before you file anything. Some errors are obvious, others hide inside a payment grid and quietly cost you an approval. These are the ones that win disputes, with the proof that settles each.

Two things are not errors and will not win a credit report dispute: an accurate late payment you wish had not happened, and a collection that is yours and unpaid. The first ages off; the second is a collection with its own rules, and the agency behind it has limits on what it can do. Filing a blanket dispute against every negative entry wastes your time and can get later disputes treated as frivolous.

What do you need before you file a credit report dispute?

You cannot dispute what you have not read, so the first job is your own copy of both reports. Both bureaus give Canadians free access to their own file, and reading it is a soft inquiry that never touches your score. The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada lists every free route, online, by mail and by phone, for each bureau.

Then build a one-page list. For each entry you plan to challenge, write down the lender or agency name, the account number as the report shows it, the month in question, what the report says and what is true. Specific beats long: a dispute that says “the March 2026 payment on this card cleared March 28, statement attached” is investigated faster than one that says “this account is wrong”.

Equifax publishes the exact documents it wants with a dispute, and TransUnion asks for the same categories. Gather them once and both filings go out the same afternoon.

Equifax caps an online dispute at three attachments, so if you have many pages, merge them into a single PDF and count it as one file. Keep a copy of everything you send and note the date you sent it; that date is what every later deadline counts from.

How do you file an Equifax dispute?

Equifax Canada takes a credit report dispute online, by mail or by phone, and all three are free. Online is the fastest and lets you track the file. This is the sequence as Equifax publishes it on its own dispute page.

1. Start the dispute online. Request the dispute form through the Start Your Dispute page, confirm your identity, and complete the form. Attach your ID and your proof, up to three files, as a single PDF if you have more.
2. Or mail the printed form. Download and print the form, fill it in, and send it with copies of your documents to Equifax Canada Co., National Consumer Relations, Box 190, Montreal, Quebec H1S 2Z2. Send copies only.
3. Name each item. For every entry, give the lender name, the account as shown, the month if it is a payment error, and the correction you want: change the status, change the month, or delete the entry.
4. Wait for the investigation. Equifax says it processes an online dispute in about 15 to 20 days and a mailed one in 20 to 25 days. If it can correct the file from your documents it does; otherwise it asks the reporting company to verify the entry.
5. Read the result. Online filers get the outcome by email, mailed filers by letter. The notice lists what changed. Pull a fresh report and confirm the correction is on it.

During the 2026 postal disruption Equifax posted phone numbers for people who could not mail a form; the current numbers are on its contact page, and the online route avoids the issue altogether. If you also want to complain about how a dispute was handled, Equifax’s published complaint process acknowledges a complaint within 10 business days and answers in writing within 30 days.

How do you file a TransUnion dispute?

TransUnion Canada runs its own online dispute service and also takes a credit report dispute by mail or by phone. The process mirrors Equifax’s, but it is a separate investigation with a separate file, so a correction at one bureau never flows to the other.

1. Dispute online. Sign in to TransUnion’s online credit report dispute service, pick the entries you are challenging, give the reason for each, and upload your ID and proof.
2. Or mail the Credit Investigation Request Form. Print it, complete it, and send it with copies of your documents to the TransUnion Consumer Relations Centre, 3115 Harvester Road, Suite 201, Burlington, Ontario L7N 3N8. The form asks whether you want the result by email or by mail.
3. Or call. TransUnion’s consumer line is 1-800-663-9980. Phone is useful to confirm what was received; the investigation itself still needs your documents.
4. Wait for the investigation. TransUnion contacts the company that reported the entry and, like Equifax, corrects or deletes anything that company cannot confirm. Provincial law gives the bureau about 30 days to respond, and most TransUnion investigations finish inside that window.
5. Confirm the fix on a fresh report. The result notice tells you what changed. Check the updated file, and check the Equifax file for the same error if you have not already.

Do you have to file a credit report dispute with both bureaus?

Yes, whenever both files show the error. Most lenders report to both bureaus, so the same wrong entry usually sits on both reports, and the bureaus do not share dispute results. Fixing one leaves the error live on the other, where the next lender may pull it. The faster path is to file both in one sitting with the same documents.

One shortcut helps with both: tell the lender in writing at the same time you file. The bureau will ask that lender to verify the entry anyway, and a lender that already has your statement in hand often corrects its own reporting first. A lender correction updates both bureaus in the next reporting cycle, which is the only way a single action fixes two files.

What happens after you file?

The bureau opens an investigation. If your documents settle the question on their own, for example a paid-in-full letter against a balance still showing, the bureau corrects the file directly. Otherwise it sends the disputed entry to the company that reported it and asks that company to verify it. Three outcomes are possible.

• Corrected or deleted. The company agrees, or does not answer inside the window. The entry is fixed or removed and you receive the result with an updated view of the file.
• Verified as accurate. The company confirms the entry. It stays, and the bureau tells you so. This is not the end; see the next section.
• Partly changed. Common with payment history: the lender confirms a late payment happened but corrects the month or the severity code. Read the result closely, because a smaller error is still an error.

When the correction comes through, order a fresh report from that bureau and confirm it. Scores update the next time the file is read, so a corrected balance or a removed collection shows in your number within a reporting cycle. If the error was fraud or a mixed file, keep checking for a few months; the same lender can re-report the bad data if its own records were never fixed, and a second dispute with the first result attached closes it for good.

What if your credit report dispute is rejected?

A rejection means the reporting company told the bureau the entry is accurate. You are not finished, and the order of the next steps matters, because each one is stronger with the one before it on paper.

1. Ask the lender for its evidence. Write to the lender’s credit reporting or customer relations team, not a branch, and ask what record it verified against. Lenders correct their own reporting more often than bureaus overturn them.
2. Use the lender’s complaint process. Every federally regulated bank and card issuer must run a complaint procedure with access to an external complaints body at the end of it; the FCAC’s page on fixing errors explains how to escalate inside the lender first.
3. File again with new proof. A second dispute with a document the first one lacked is a new dispute, not a repeat. Attach the first result so the bureau sees the history.
4. Add a consumer statement. Both bureaus let you attach a short explanation to the entry for free, 100 words or fewer in most provinces, with ID. Any lender that pulls the file sees your side next to the entry. It does not change the score, but it changes what a human underwriter reads.
5. Complain to your province. Credit bureaus are regulated by the provinces, not Ottawa. If you believe the bureau did not investigate properly, or kept an entry past the legal limit, the consumer office in your province takes the complaint; the table below names each one. In British Columbia you can also ask the Information and Privacy Commissioner to review a refused correction, within 30 days of the refusal.

Keep every form, every date and every reply in one folder. A provincial complaint that arrives with the original dispute, the bureau’s answer and the lender’s letter is acted on; one that arrives as a story is sent back for documents.

Who regulates a credit report dispute in each province?

The duty to investigate and correct comes from provincial law, and the office that hears complaints about a bureau is provincial too. Ontario’s Consumer Reporting Act and British Columbia’s Business Practices and Consumer Protection Act are the two most people cite, and every other province has an equivalent. The territories have no credit reporting statute, so complaints there go to the bureau itself.

Wherever you live, the dispute itself is the same two forms. The province only matters when the bureau has not done its job, and even then the first call is the bureau’s own complaint line. The rules for paid credit repair are a separate set of laws, and only Ontario and Quebec have a written code for that trade.

How long can an entry legally stay on your report?

Part of a smart credit report dispute is knowing the difference between an error you can remove and an accurate entry that just needs time. A dispute will not erase true history before its date, but an entry past its date is the easiest dispute there is, because there is no lender left to verify it with.

Provincial law sets the ceiling. Ontario’s act bars an agency from reporting most adverse items older than seven years, and both bureaus purge a year earlier than that in practice. The FCAC publishes the same six-year figures for both bureaus. If an entry is inside its window and accurate, the better use of your time is to build positive history around it: our guide to how to build credit in Canada covers the habits that move a score once the report is clean.

Worked example: one wrong collection, both bureaus, with dates

Say you pull both reports on Thursday, October 22, 2026 and find a paid-off phone account that both bureaus still show as a collection with a balance, because the agency never updated it after you paid in August. Here is the credit report dispute run end to end.

The whole sequence is two forms, one email and two calendar reminders. The only part people skip is the second form, and that is the one that leaves the error live for the next lender.

What if the error is fraud?

An account you never opened, an inquiry from a lender you never applied to, or an address you never lived at can mean someone used your identity. The FCAC’s advice is to treat it as fraud from the first call, because a plain credit report dispute fixes the entry but not the cause.

• Tell the lender first. Call the lender or agency that reported the account, say the account is not yours, and ask it to close it and send a letter confirming that.
• Place a fraud alert at both bureaus. A fraud alert, also called an identity alert, tells every lender that pulls your file to confirm it is you before opening anything. The bureaus may ask for ID and may charge a fee for the alert itself; the dispute stays free.
• Report it. File with the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre and your local police, and keep the report numbers. Both bureaus accept them as fraud proof with the dispute.
• Dispute every fraudulent entry at both bureaus. Attach the lender’s letter and the report number. Then keep pulling your reports for a few months, because the same account can be re-reported if the lender’s own file was not fixed.

How do you keep your report error-free after the dispute?

A credit report dispute fixes the entry in front of you. Four habits catch the next one before it costs an approval.

• Read both reports twice a year. It is free, it never touches the score, and errors are easiest to fix while the proof is still in your email.
• Keep the paper. Paid-in-full letters, closure confirmations and the last statement on every closed account are the documents that make a future dispute a one-day job.
• Keep your details current with every lender. Mixed files start with an address or a name variant; the same name and address everywhere keeps your data from merging with someone else’s.
• Set a reminder for purge dates. Six years after the last late payment or collection, pull the report and check it is gone. If it is still there, that is the easiest dispute on this page.

If the report is accurate and the problem is the history itself, the dispute has done its job and the next tools are different ones: the step-by-step fix-my-credit plan sequences what to do after the errors are gone, credit cards that rebuild credit and building credit without a card add clean history, and a debt management plan stops new misses when the balances are the cause. Our hub on credit repair in Canada explains what a dispute can and cannot do and what no company can promise.

Credit report dispute FAQ

FixMyCredit.ca is a free information and referral service, not a lender, credit bureau, or law firm. We never charge fees, never promise outcomes, and never ask you to pay anyone in advance. Dispute timelines, addresses and forms are set by Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada and change over time; confirm the current process with the bureau, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, or your provincial consumer protection office. Content is general information, not legal or financial advice.