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April 12, 2005
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| Haven't seen your credit report in a while? A new federal law lets you get it for free, but it can take perseverance to set your financial house in order. (MPR photo illustration/Jeff Horwich) |
St. Paul, Minn. — Elaine Williams lives in Eden Prairie, and when the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions (FACT) Act kicked in last month in Minnesota, she decided to use it, because...well, just because she could.
Williams thought this would be easy: go to a Web site -- like AnnualCreditReport.com -- type in your personal info, get your report on your computer, fix what's wrong, and you're done. Right?
"This was a lengthy report," Williams says. "There are 13 pages. Some of the material is wrong, probably because of my birthday."
The credit bureau had Williams' birthday wrong.
"Because of that, the report was incorrect. I mean, they have accounts in here I've never heard of," she says.
A second credit bureau had the birthday wrong, too. The third one might also, but Williams is too exhausted to find out.
She thinks somehow she got cross-referenced with another Elaine Williams -- a potential pitfall for people with common names. Nothing in the report seems to damage her credit, but like many people, her instinct is just to get the whole mess cleared up.
But that process is looking less like an hour at the computer, and more like a part-time job. Most credit report corrections need to happen by mail, or by phone.
"I finally got through on the phone today, and found that they have this voice response (system) that is really difficult" to use, she says. "This voice keeps saying, 'I don't understand you, I can't understand what you are saying.'"
It might not seem like it, but Williams is actually illustrating one of the benefits of the free credit report law. If wrangling with phone systems and customer service representatives is an inevitable part of the process, better to go through it when there's plenty of time -- rather than, say, when the clock is ticking on a mortgage application.
As one of the world's largest issuers of credit cards and loans, Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp hears from a lot of people confused about what they find on their credit report. Those people will probably deal with the fraud liaison office overseen by Mary Blegen.
Blegen loves the new law, because it makes credit checks a matter of regular maintenance, rather than damage control.
"Frankly, it's easier to work through it when there isn't the stress -- the pressure on our consumers," Blegen says.
Blegen is not seeing a surge in inquiries because of the new law. Some people might be slow in learning about it, and many people already had to get their reports in recent years because of the home buying and refinancing boom.
More credit reports mean some extra work for U.S. Bank. But Blegen says catching problems early saves on fraud investigations in the long run.
"With all the identity theft out there, and being aware of what could happen, I think this is going to become a more commonplace activity. And it should be. Again, this is your financial health," she says.
Blegen says any institutions on your report you don't recognize should raise red flags -- though in many cases, the confusion may stem from companies that have changed names, or accounts you had simply forgotten about.
A credit report will also show who has made inquiries about your credit. If someone you don't recognize has made repeated requests, Blegen says that can signal suspicious activity.
One of the most common credit report issues may also be mostly harmless -- old, inactive credit cards that still show up under your name. Blegen says if they're paid up, they don't hurt your credit and you don't have to get rid of them. But she identifies with people like Karen Santiano-Francis of Harris, Minnesota, who is struggling with that very issue.
"Sears just does not seem to want to close this card," Santiano-Francis says. "We have not used it in 15 years."
She says the credit bureaus also have multiple spellings of her name, and somehow combined her old and new addresses. Her husband is in the military, where bad credit can prompt an inquiry from superiors. The couple is using a staggered schedule to keep rolling tabs on the three credit bureaus.
"I checked one of them now, and in two months I'll check another one," she says. "And my husband is doing the same thing. So we're getting a pretty good picture of our joint credit report."
Under the FACT Act, you can check each of the three bureaus once a year, for free. That's probably enough to keep most people plenty busy.
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