Credit can be an administrative pain...
I've been in a credit mood lately. I go into phases and then obsess. I'm just fascinated with all of the credit card products there are on the market. Amazing. It's also too scary how easy it is to open an account, in fact, my mom has 2 new credit cards she insists she didn't apply for and doesn't know how she got them. I ask like, 3 questions and it's easy to understand.
My mom is flooded with credit card offers, many of them are from one of her banks. She gets this idea if she collects all of the solicitations and walks into the branch, she can get them to stop. So she confuses them and vice versa, hands over documents and voila! A new credit card arrives in the mail. About 2-3 months later, another card arrives, but she "didn't activate it, isn't it just a newer card of the first?" She was about to do it for another round when I asked her to stop, cut up the mail and we'll file an opt-out form for her. Whew.
My turn, I am browsing TrueCredit's website run by TransUnion. Suddenly, a chat box pops up and says, "Free monitoring service trial for 30 days." I ignore it because I've been with PrivacyGuard for over 5 years now. Well, they then mention a rate that's less than PrivacyGuard. Sure, I'll do the trial. Since the first step is to pull a credit report, they want to make sure I'm who I say I am. I need to correctly answer questions about me from 2 of 5 categories: Installment Loan Acct#, CC Acct #, Residence, Employer History and Birth Year.
I wanted to just hit the easiest ones, let's start with Birth Year. Well, I apparently got that wrong...my answer didn't match their records. Fine, Residence, yay, got that right. I still need a second category, Employer History. Got that wrong. Oh, now tough ones, I'm not at home, so let's take a chance with CC. They ask for 2 credit card numbers, but I only am carrying one of the two on me... Next. Installment loan, my first choices here make me sigh...they're all old car loans that have been paid in full for years now. I don't have those account numbers any more!
I eventually get in. I then find out, they have my birth year off by 6 years, they misspelled my employer name (Univestiy) and listed an old apartment company I used to rent from as a former employer.
My actual credit activity looks right, I just didn't expect to have to correct personal information. What good is data if it's bad data? The only item I couldn't correct online was my birth year. They want proof they're wrong. Sigh, what a pain.
My mom is flooded with credit card offers, many of them are from one of her banks. She gets this idea if she collects all of the solicitations and walks into the branch, she can get them to stop. So she confuses them and vice versa, hands over documents and voila! A new credit card arrives in the mail. About 2-3 months later, another card arrives, but she "didn't activate it, isn't it just a newer card of the first?" She was about to do it for another round when I asked her to stop, cut up the mail and we'll file an opt-out form for her. Whew.
My turn, I am browsing TrueCredit's website run by TransUnion. Suddenly, a chat box pops up and says, "Free monitoring service trial for 30 days." I ignore it because I've been with PrivacyGuard for over 5 years now. Well, they then mention a rate that's less than PrivacyGuard. Sure, I'll do the trial. Since the first step is to pull a credit report, they want to make sure I'm who I say I am. I need to correctly answer questions about me from 2 of 5 categories: Installment Loan Acct#, CC Acct #, Residence, Employer History and Birth Year.
I wanted to just hit the easiest ones, let's start with Birth Year. Well, I apparently got that wrong...my answer didn't match their records. Fine, Residence, yay, got that right. I still need a second category, Employer History. Got that wrong. Oh, now tough ones, I'm not at home, so let's take a chance with CC. They ask for 2 credit card numbers, but I only am carrying one of the two on me... Next. Installment loan, my first choices here make me sigh...they're all old car loans that have been paid in full for years now. I don't have those account numbers any more!
I eventually get in. I then find out, they have my birth year off by 6 years, they misspelled my employer name (Univestiy) and listed an old apartment company I used to rent from as a former employer.
My actual credit activity looks right, I just didn't expect to have to correct personal information. What good is data if it's bad data? The only item I couldn't correct online was my birth year. They want proof they're wrong. Sigh, what a pain.