Dead people do not need cars, and they also have trouble making the payments. That’s probably why one woman’s credit score plummeted to zero when a lender accidentally put her down as dead. It was due to human error, but she’ll need to wait 30 days to move on with her new car purchase because someone at Acura Financial Services picked the wrong thing in a drop-down menu.

Yes, that is literally what happened. Unfortunately, it just takes one creditor accidentally telling the bureaus that you’re deceased to send your credit score plummeting to zero and to make it impossible to sign up for new lines of credit. She was dealing with Acura from a previous car purchase.

What can you do about it? You can’t prevent people from clicking on the wrong thing at your lender, unfortunately, but the best thing to do is check your credit periodically for errors like this. Use AnnualCreditReport.com at least 30 days before you plan to start shopping for a new home, car, or other thing that requires credit bureaus to believe that you’re alive.

It takes about 30 days to clear an error for the system, but this 100% alive aspiring car owner was lucky: she had contacted CBS Sacramento about her plight, and their calls to Experian and Equifax prompted the credit bureaus to correct Acura’s error a few weeks earlier than they normally would have, and she got to zoom off in her new car.

Call Kurtis: I Can’t Buy a Car Because Lender Declared Me Dead [CBS Sacramento]

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