How one’s credit score is computed is to most people a complete mystery, akin to figuring out a quarterback’s passer rating. Thus, there are numerous myths and half-truths that have attached themselves to credit scores, some of them having at least a partial basis in fact. [More]
Get A Free FICO-esque Score From Credit Sesame
By June 7, 2011
Credit Sesame is an advertising-supported service that gets you your credit score for free. No hidden fees, singers in Renaissance garb or gotchas. It’s not quite your FICO, but it’s close. [More]
TransUnion Wants You To Share Your Credit Score On Facebook
By May 27, 2011
Social media may have created a culture of over-sharing, but what’s too personal to share with your Facebook friends? Michael was checking his credit report, and was surprised to see a “Share on Facebook” button directly below his credit score. [More]
ID Theft: Fix Some Fraudulent Accounts Before Correcting Legit Ones
By May 25, 2011
One of the side effects of someone using your identity to open up a bunch of accounts and leaving you saddled with the bills is that your credit history gets trashed, which means you get victimized a second time over as your real creditors jack up your interest rates and take other adverse action. Your bank account could even get frozen, making you late on some bills. But before you go plead your case to get your credit restored with them, you’ll want to fix some of the fraudulent accounts first. [More]
Do VIP's Get Privileged Treatment From Credit Bureaus?
By May 16, 2011
NYT reports that the three major credit bureaus each keep a special VIP list of important people who are given preferential treatment when fixing their credit reports. The list has the names of celebrities, politicians, judges and others on it. When they have errors on their reports, they are fixed by employees who work in America, and fixed swiftly. The rest of us get our requests shunted overseas to be dealt with in a cursory manner. [More]
Never Pay A Debt Collector The Full Amount
By May 12, 2011
The dirty little secret of debt collecting is that most of them are not working directly for the original company you ran up the debt with. They’re an outside third party and they bought your debt for pennies on the dollar. The debt collector’s goal is to get the most money out of you for the least amount of effort. This means all you have to do to make this calculus work to your advantage is settle with the debt collector for around the same price he paid to buy your debt. So start low. [More]
Free Sample Letters For Dealing With Credit Bureaus
By May 12, 2011
Cleaning up a dirty credit report usually involves a lot of letters. Because just mustering the strength to sit down and face this task may have already drained you of your creative juice, via Frugal For Life here are a few sample letters you can use when dealing with the credit bureaus, debt collectors and creditors. Use them as Madlibs or as inspiration to kick your own cleanup spree into high gear. [More]
Trying To Ruin Your Ex's Credit Score Is Not A Good Way Of Getting Revenge
By May 4, 2011
When a romance goes south, it’s not unheard of for at least one of the parties involved to begin dreaming up clever ways to continue making the other person’s life hell. And one thing you definitely don’t want to do is try to screw with your ex’s credit score. [More]
Sony: PlayStation Network Users' Credit Card Info May Have Been Leaked
By April 26, 2011
Sony’s early bid for a high seed in next year’s Worst Company tournament continues, as does the mass outage of its PlayStation Network. Yesterday, the company admitted that it wasn’t sure if users’ credit card info was compromised by whatever evil forces hacked the system, but now Sony has slightly upgraded that uncertainty by saying that credit card info may have been leaked. [More]
Someone Explain To Experian How American Express Cards Work
By April 21, 2011
How does American Express work? Michael writes that Experian doesn’t seem to understand how the company’s credit limits work. His card technically has no limit, and this confuses Experian. They coped with the confusion by showing that instead of having theoretically infinite available credit, he had $0, making his pristine record look pretty bad to potential lenders. [More]
Being 30 Days Late On House Payment Can Knock 100 Points Off Credit Score
By April 15, 2011
Usually very closed-mouth about how it calculates scores, FICO released a whole bunch of data about how being late on your mortgage payments affects your credit score. For instance, being 30 days later on a mortgage payment can chop your 780 credit score down to 670. And a short sale or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure will hurt your score just as bad as a foreclosure if the service reports it as having a deficiency amount or an unpaid balance. Yikes! Here’s some sexy tables with more details: [More]
Get A Bad Deal On Your Loan? Now You'll Know Why
By April 14, 2011
If you applied for a loan and got denied or received a higher interest rate than other borrowers with better credit scores, starting July 21st, the lender has to send you a free copy of your credit score. [More]
Comcast Says It's Not Pulling My Credit Report, Then Pulls My Credit Report
By April 5, 2011
Brian found himself in a troubling situation with Comcast. He was setting up service at his mother’s home, about thirty miles from, his home where he already had Comcast service. Comcast’s systems apparently aren’t set up to handle one person with separate accounts in different regions. A customer service rep told Brian that he would not be checking his credit report in order to set up the new service: then ran right up against the freeze Brian had put on his credit report in order to prevent unauthorized access. From, say, Comcast. [More]
Want Just A Credit Report From TransUnion? Too Bad
By March 8, 2011
Michael wanted to pay a copy of his Transunion credit report. In theory, this shouldn’t be a problem: he gives Transunion money, they give him a credit report. If only it worked that way. It turns out that just buying a single copy of your report from Transunion is like trying to buy a mobile phone in America from a retail store: you can get it for “free” with a subscription to monitoring service, or as part of a package deal with other services, but you can’t just hand over cash for a credit report. [More]
Capital One Burrows Into Your Wallet, Makes Your Life Hell
By February 22, 2011
Gerard, now 26, has spent his entire adult life fighting with Capital One. No, we are not exaggerating: he got his first credit card with the company at age 18, and they have been causing him payment and credit-report headaches ever since. [More]
Mike Fights The Identity Thieves
By February 18, 2011
Someone stole Mike’s identity and has been using it to pay for gas service and buy cellphones in his name. He’s even got a $163 default judgment against him for something he never paid. Here’s how he unraveled the threads of his identity thieves, and how he may never truly be free from their grasp. [More]
Experian Adds Rent Payments To Credit Reports
By February 17, 2011
In what could be a boon to renters looking to build a credit history (or bad news if you have a roommate who always delays your rent), credit reporting agency Experian has begun incorporating data on rental payments into its reports. [More]
Wells Fargo Has A Dispute Representative Named "Dispute Representative"
By November 19, 2010
It seems Wells Fargo has an employee whose actual name is “Dispute Representative.” Or at least so it would appear by the letter he received in his response to his request to have an erroneous item removed from his credit report. Guess the guy found his perfect job. [More]
