See your credit report online, right now.

Credit Theft - A True Story

These are not stories made up for ad hype.  These events really happened to people I know.  As Joe Friday would have said, "the facts Mam, just the facts".

This is a true story of credit theft.  While making a large purchase, my friend Mary applied for credit and much to her surprise was refused because of unpaid debts.  When she received a copy of her credit report she saw a claim, now in collection, against her by a southern phone company for thousands of dollars worth of phone bills.  Mary lives in the Midwest and never had a phone in the south.  After much anguish, many phone calls and letters she was able to convince the phone company that someone else, using her name and social security number, had signed up for the phone. 

She puzzled over how anyone could know her SSN and id information.  The only connection that came to mind was through an insurance company with an office located in that state.   A year before she had spoken to them several times regarding her policy. She guessed that an employee, or more likely a former employee, took her identity information and misused it.  

Mary was lucky, in the end, the incorrect information was removed from her credit.  But it took a while to get it done.

Check your credit report!

Incorrect Credit Reports 
It happened to me 2 weeks ago!

The credit report I bought a few weeks ago came back with my car payment listed 3 different times.  Evidently someone at the credit reporting company wasn't a very good typist because the account number was in there three different ways.  One entry was correct, one was only the first half of the account number and the third was a slightly different number.  Maybe the typist was a trainee, or just didn't care, but they had not bothered to delete the incorrect entries.  So, my credit report showed that I had an additional $900 worth of monthly payments.  Something like this can throw off your credit ratios.  With today's low interest rates, I'm looking at refinancing my house, and this could make the difference between getting a loan approved in a timely manner (before rates go back up) or not.

Same name as you, and bad credit? Oh boy!

How about someone with your name and bad credit?  This happened to one of my cousins and to a friend.  In both cases they had a terrible time getting the erroneous information removed.  And, once removed, other items popped up so they had to go through the process again, and again.

A few years ago, a credit collection agency from the South called me many times trying to collect a large business debt from a man with the same family name as mine.  (My business name had the family name in it.)  In the end my attorney had to write them a letter stating that I had nothing to do with the person and that if they put anything on my credit report I would take legal action against them.  

Buying a Home?  

Don't lose it because your credit report is wrong!

When you sign a contract to buy a house, you usually have only a fixed number of days to get a loan commitment from a bank, or the contract can be voided.  It takes at least a month to clean up a credit report error.  Don't lose your dream house because someone used your credit fraudulently or the credit information is just plain wrong. 

Don't wait,  check your credit report now!  

Gloria