Just My Random Stuff Just some hopefully useful, yet random posts from my own experiences, that nobody ever told me about before.

Credit Bureaus Ripping Me Off

It seems everyone out there today has advice on how to rebuild or fix credit.  I decided to take the "safe" approach and joined up with Equifax for their credit monitoring service.  Well, I soon realized that what a waste of money it is.  I switched to Experian, same thing.  Not only are the tri-merged reports never in sync, you can only pull them one time a month.  But that's not the worst part of it.  Both companies are extremely horrible in managing their customer's payments.

First with Equifax:  I canceled service and the guy on the phone tells me everything will be canceled, etc. etc.  Well, the next month, low and behold, a charge for the service appears on my credit card.  I call Equifax and was told that I was mistaking and that they don't see anything in their system.  So I go through the process of disputing with my credit card company.  Then, the next month again, another charge.  I call Equifax, this time the guy says that there is a "bug" in the system and he has to file a ticket with some support group to get the credit issued for the charge and to stop billing.  I, of course, again disputed with credit card company, and decided to change my card number.

Experian is next on my list.  After being canceled for over 3 months, a $50 charge appears on my card.  I call and after spending over 30 minutes on the phone, the rep reluctantly decides to credit my card.  She was certain the charge was for an active service, yet she couldn't tell me what that active service was.  Maybe because I had canceled 4 months prior?  Anyway, she says 7-10 business days and I should see the credit on my card.  Guess what, I called them back 20 business days later and the rep said there is some error processing credits in their system.  What the hell?  So I call my credit card company again, they tell me that they can't dispute it until 30 days have gone since the credit was issued.  So I got 7 more days to wait to file the dispute, since Experian "can't process credits."

Know what, I'm going back to the only true totally free credit reports.  As said by the FTC, there is only one true source for Free Credit Reports.  Yes, its powered by the three bureaus, but providing reports is what they know how to do, I sure as hell am not giving them more money.  So take my advice, drop any service where you are paying for credit reports, get them once a year for free using the only credit report website backed by the FTC, AnnualCreditReport.com.