Watch out for new credit score

[Nasty Jack]

Over forty years ago I was involved in the early development of a credit score being conducted by the now defunct Montgomery Ward. Before this and even for a while after, companies did their own risk scoring which was not accurate as was the case with early credit reports. Then along came the Fair Credit Reporting Act enacted in 1971 and later the FDCPA in 1977. Eventually the FICO method of credit scoring was born.

This process is still fraught with problems like the fact that if the wrong and damaging information gets on your credit report, sometimes it is near impossible to remove. In my experience blogging on consumers' personal data, Experian is the worst in dealing with this problem. Trans Union is better, and Experian is actually pretty good.

And now the latest version of the credit report is the VantageScore created by all three credit bureaus. It has some advantages listed in the article below but does not address the primary problem with credit bureaus, that of how to easily contact them to get something done.

Read more here: link:http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/11/pf/credit-score/index.html|

[hollysmom]

1. ha ha , last year I got a copy of my free credit rating or at least tried to get it

They asked me a few security questions first - I could not answer the one that asked which bank gave you the mortgage 4 years ago because, well, I don't have a mortgage. I did pursue one company to completion and find they had me listed as the owner of a house in the opposite end of the state - A little investigation found my ex owned it, he might have used my credit rating to get it, I don't l know, but I had them take it off - they were so sure it was correct. They also had 4 different SS numbers for me, none correct.

[hollysmom]

3. well the reason they had different ss# was....

I got my credit cards before they asked for SS# - I am very old. When I went to places like Block buster and they would not let me rent tapes unless I gave them a SS - I made one up. When I went on a contract to AT&T and was not an employee, I could not take the job unless I gave them my SS#, so I gave them my corporate number instead - I did not give my number to doctor's either, I insisted that I get a random number from insurance companies instead of a number based on my SS# and they complied - surprisingly after a little arguing Turns out there are 2 other people in the state with my name- who knew? Finally, I went to change one credit card and even though I was a paying member for 30 years, they would not give me a new card because my SS#s were all over the place and I had to give them my real one.

So that is how there were a bunch of SS#s in the credit check - as far as the mortgage - I think that was someone with the same name, I got my credit records straightened out and have excellent credit - I had good credit before, but they just did not know for sure what my SS# was.