posted
Just don't! You'll be very very sorry if you do.
<insert hushed tones here>
You are being watched. And recorded. And enumerated. It's been this way since before you were born. Your data (gestation period, weight & length at birth, number of fingers & toes, etc.) has been on the books.
Now, as you are older and a productive member of society (one can only hope). Your data are valuable. It is being sold today, as I write this, to companies who hope to make money from your data. Your spending habits, your ability to pay back loans, your income bracket, gender, and ethnicity.
You might try to take comfort in the fact that often times the data they have about you is incorrect. Fool!!! This is the worst possible thing. Bad data means bad person. You are what your data say you are. If their computer transposes a digit in your zip code, you are no longer in Beverly Hills (90210), but somewhere far, far worse. And what then? You couldn't get credit if you owned the frequin' bank my friend.
And this is where my tale ends. I'm just one person. I am being hunted. I have two creditors, one of which was actually OUT OF BUSINESS when the record was updated with false information. The credit bureau shows both accounts closed years ago. But they accepted an update to the accounts. It now shows that I'm past due on a closed account, AFTER the account closed. YEARS after the account closed.
It's a mystery. No one can figure out how it happened. But it happened 2x!
And now, I'm a bad person.
My credit report might as well say that I gave money to Al Qaeda and wrote "kill Americans!" on the check.
(0ops, that'll get picked up by the FBI, Yi Yi!)
So, nice to know you all.
I'm going underground before they catch me.
If you read a report that someone going by my name has been picked up on conspiracy charges, you know what happened.
posted
While I agree that it's not a good idea to screw with the data that goes onto your credit report and the like, I love to give false data to companies to use to track my purchases at stores and such.
So far, I've been a 95 year old latino woman somewhere back east, living in zip 10101 (just thought it sounded really nice). I've also been a 10 year old white kid that just smacks of being ADD since I'm prone to give other's email addresses when signing up for everything on the planet when asked. A favorite tactic is to give the company that likely will sell my email address either their support address or else the email address of an executive if I can find it.
I figure that it'll really help people with their demographics on me.
I've also been known to give false phone numbers and addresses for those silly club card things. If anyone wants a free card to use for Safeway, punch in 480-763-0750 as your phone number. Last time I checked, over 30 people were using it around the country.
Posts: 851 | Registered: Oct 2001
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posted
I'm so torn between hugging Bob and at slacker and his Safeway card number . . .
Bob, my friend - it's not the end of the world. Now you get to follow through on neat techniques such as working the Better Business Bureau, the Attorney General's Office and every politician remotely connencted to you to MAKE THIS COMPANY'S LIFE HELL!
Posts: 5609 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
Hmmm. I'm missing the ID theft part - it appears to me as though credit companies are up to their usual pissy tricks. And slacker said something quite funny (IMHO) - my apologies if I offended -
Posts: 5609 | Registered: Jan 2003
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Sheesh! Keep it down, people! TransUnion and Equifax are looking for me!!!
Last night, I saw a suspicious grey sedan parked outside. They were going through my trash looking for receipts I think.
Fooled them! I printed up some phony receipts showing that I'm really a 14 year old Siberian Husky who's been genetically altered to have a 175 IQ and oppososable foot pads (so I can type on Hatrack!)
Anyway, I've already received half a dozen phone offers for grooming and my mail box is full of racy pictures from zoos around the country!
Wow, these guys work fast!
But no, it's not identity theft. The problem was started by companies losing their ability to keep records straight and the folks at the credit bureaus practice of posting ANYTHING that's sent to them. Thus you have a record that shows:
1. Account closed 1998, zero balance 2. Account past due 2002, zero balance
And that counts against my credit because it says "past due" on it even though the balance is zero and the account was closed with a zero balance 4 years before.
Go figure.
This all took place at the end of 2002. And it wouldn't have even been noticed if I hadn't sent in one of those silly credit offers. I thought I could get more frequent flier miles. Instead they denied my application because of accounts that no longer exist and haven't for six whole years.
And were paid off!
Weird.
Oh well.
Congress passed a law that allows consumers to go to one spot to fix errors in a credit report. But the law isn't in effect yet. So I have to go to all three individually. Which means I have to pay them to get a copy of my report and then dispute the entries.
Meanwhile, I have a worse credit rating than I deserve.
And they admitted to me in their first letter that they weren't sure who I was. Their second letter admitted that they'd lost a bunch of my records and would I please send them whatever information I had about past accounts.
I told them that if they can't find their records they need to delete the entry and that I wasn't going to send them a darn thing.
This guy's hilarious... Read the rest of his pranks, too, if you're bored. But this one, he'll send you a new barcode to stick over your Safeway card so all your purchases look like he made them.
Edit: ooops, forgot to say, good luck, fun, and encouragement with the Credit people, Bob! You'll need it!
posted
OK, so I guess it is one of those things that will be funny SOME day, when you look back on it. I just hate the bureaucratic messes we can get into. I am dealing with the Dept. of Ed. right now, the idiots, so I guess this all hits tooclose to home.
Good luck, Bob McCarthy!
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
I was on my 3rd attempt to get this straightened out, so I just wrote to the CEO of TransUnion. I wonder if there's a way to get class action status and sue these companies out of existence.
I mean, if they can charge me to look at my own information and there are errors in it...it just sucks...and then they don't fix them...
Arrrgggghhh..
Actually, I love dealing with bureaucracies. I used to train people in NYC DOT on how to deal with the public and each other productively. It was great fun! Thus I can always offer my professional services to help them fix the problems I complain about. Sadly, no-ones ever hired me to do this. But when I'm president!!!
Watch out.
I am, however, at least partly responsible for:
1) The change in airline policies that allows people to voucher a non-refundable fare when it turns out you can't use it.
2) The current law (not yet in effect) that gives consumers ONE PLACE to go to complain about a problem in a credit report, and to report fraud/abuse. I was in constant communication with the folks who were drafting that bill, and up to that point it just had the provisions that VISA and MASTERCARD had written for them. Thanks to a few people writing letters and a really great article in the Wall Street Journal, some pro-consumer stuff got wedged into the bill at the last minute. Yippee!!
Not enough, mind you. And it hasn't taken effect yet.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Bob, if you were denied credit because of a credit report any time within (I think) 30 days, by law you have a right to have one free copy of such reports sent to you AT NO COST.....it's the law, and has been for quite some time now.
Check it out. I got free copies last year, and didn't play a cent for them. I think that there is a limit on them though...one copy per denial.
At least that way you aren't paying for the privilege of correcting their mistakes.
posted
Actually, it's one copy per year, not per denial. And once they decide that they don't have to correct anything, you don't get another copy. If they correct something, you get a 2nd copy to show that they fixed it.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
My wife had her identity stolen a couple of years ago. We still get reports from the Bergen County prosecutor's office, letting us know the status of the perpetrators, so we can go to their parole hearings and ask that they be denied.
They got her info from an accomplice who worked in our dentist's office (had some of my info too, but they got her a driver's license in New Jersey, and applied for credit cards in her name). Fortunately, the cops caught them before they charged anything.
We got free copies of our credit reports. I don't understand why Bob had to pay for his. You're entitled to free copies of your own report (There may be a limit, though). The credit companies kept sending us stuff on how to eliminate incorrect information from our reports. Of course, we didn't have any false information on our reports, so we didn't try to change anything. So maybe if we had we'd know what Bob is going through.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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As it turns out, TransUnion DID fix my credit report to reflect reality. They just happened to send me a letter after that saying that they couldn't figure out what I was asking them to do. Duh! They'd already fixed it, so it didn't show up the way I was describing it.
Note #1: The credit "history" has no memory. Once they change something, the fact that it used to be another way is lost forever. This could be good. Could be bad.
As for free reports, sadly, this differs from state to state. There are some states where you are entitled to one free report per year, whether you've been denied credit or not. There are other states where you can't get a free report unless you are denied credit. And that's only because federal law mandates it. Not that long ago, if you lived in one of THOSE states, you had to pay anyway.
NOTE #2: Credit company lobbyists are at work in State and Federal legislatures.
As for identity theft, this is one of the real sore points. By their very existence, credit rating bureaus make it possible, and in fact easy, for a person's identity to be stolen. They have a mechanism by which to verify the identity of anyone applying for a credit card, but they only activate that method if there is already a "fraud alert" on the record for that individual. At present, to have a fraud alert put on your record, and thus make sure that you are personally contacted whenever someone tries to get credit in your name, you have to call each of the credit reporting bureaus individually. That will soon change. Sometime in the next year, a one-stop central reporting place will be established.
You can also go there to report a fraudulent use of your identity.
NOTE #3: If you are at all concerned, it's a good idea to place a fraud alert on your credit report. It will require potential creditors to validate who they are "talking" to before issuing credit.
Anyway, now I have to go write another letter to the CEO of TransUnion telling him that my first problem is solved, but my other two are not.
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