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According to the latest class-action settlement, eligible consumers can get up to 9 months of free credit monitoring service from TransUnion!

Yesterday TransUnion announced that it will soon provide eligible U.S. consumers up to 9 months of free credit monitoring and related services. This result is part of a settlement of a lawsuit that has been pending for a decade and arose from a product has been terminated in 2001 by TransUnion. The lawsuit claimed that TransUnion has violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act when it sold consumer information to businesses for their targeted marketing products. As we know, Fair Credit Reporting Act allows TransUnion and other related companies sell publicly available data to other businesses but nor private information. TransUnion is claimed to sell private consumer information to businesses which is a violation of the law, although TransUnion said it had not violate the law. TransUnion discontinued that practice is 2001.

As a consumer, what can you benefit from this class-action settlement?

1. 6 months of credit monitoring service, giving you unlimited access to you credit report and credit score. You will also receive email alerts for any changes occur on your credit profile.
2. 9 months of credit monitoring service, plus unlimited access to your credit report and credit score. You can also use TransUnion’s mortgage simulator service.
3. You can also sign up for cash payment instead of free service provided by TransUnion. However, such cash payment will not be available in 2 years. At the same time, the cash payments can only be made when the 75 million fund has been used up for any post-settlement claims.

If you choose the first option, you will sacrifice your right to enter a class-action claim against TransUnion. If you choose second option, you will lose any further legal claims against TransUnion.

Are you eligible?

According to the settlement, any individual who had an open credit account or an open line of credit from a credit grantor (bank credit card, department store credit cards, retails store credit cards, mortgage, auto loans, personal loans, and student loans) located in the United States anytime from January 1, 1987 to May 28, 2008 is able to choose the above mentioned options.

This free credit monitoring service seems to be useful for you to bump you hard inquiries on your credit report.

This idea comes from the interesting story about a California man who has been indicted for an inventive scheme that allegedly siphoned $50,000 from online brokerage houses E-trade and Schwab.com in six months, yes, a few pennies at a time.

We all know that some online savings accounts and brokerage accounts will deposit a certain small amount of money when a customer links his/her online savings accounts and brokerage accounts to another bank account to verify the routine and account information. You have to enter the amount, which is typically from $0.02 to $1.00, from your online savings and brokerage account to claim that the account belongs to you.

However, the California man, Michael Largent, used an automated script to open around 58,000 online brokerage accounts and accumulated thousands of dollars in about 6 months. He also used the same way with Google’s Checkout and accumulated $8,225.29 in eight different bank accounts. (According to www.wired.com.)

It seems that this is a way to get you rich? Actually, “trial deposit” appears to be a standard way to verify your account information and most banks or brokerage services will not withdraw that money. So, the more you have bank/brokerage accounts, the larger the amount of trial deposits you can collect!

How much can you make if you try this in a crazy way?

Let’s assume that you can link unlimited accounts to every account you have, and each trial deposit is around $0.5 which is a typically number. Of course, we should also assume that every account uses trial deposit to verify your account information. In this way, if you have n accounts and you want to link them together with each other, you might need n*(n-1) deposits! The actual money you can earn is $0.5*n*(n-1).

Here is the result:

10 accounts—$45.00

20 accounts—$190.00

30 accounts—$435.00

50 accounts—$1225.00

100 accounts—$4950.00

200 accounts—$19900.00

500 accounts—$124750.00

1000 accounts—$499500.00

You can imagine how much you can make if you can open unlimited accounts and link them with each other. Please don’t take this seriously.

“Hard inquiry” refers to a credit pull initiated by you, and it does affect your credit score. If you are curious about your credit score, you might find out that a hard inquiry might drop you credit score 5~7 points. If you have many hard inquiries in a short time period, your application for a new credit might get rejected even if you still maintain your credit score at a relatively high level. The reason is very simple, you are requesting too many credits from credit issuers such as banks, credit card companies and other financial institutions. However, “soft inquiries” will never affect your credit scoring. Because soft inquires are invisible to credit grantors. (Hard Pull and Soft Pull)

Usually hard inquires will disappear from your credit report in about 25 months in all three credit report agencies (TransUnion, Experian, Equifax). But do you want to bump off those notorious hard inquiries from your credit report earlier than 25 months? If you want to knock hard inquiries off of your credit report, there is a very easy way. I personally was able to get rid of all of hard inquiries on my credit report at TransUnion and Equifax. I applied for many credit cards in last August: Blue from American Express, Starwood Preferred Guest Card from American Express, Citi CashReturns Card, Discover Open Road Card, BOA Rewards American Express Card, CapitalOne No Hassle Cash Card etc. There are more than 12 hard inquires on my TransUnion and Equifax credit reports. However, right now, there is no hard inquiry on my TransUnion and Equifax credit reports!

The method is popularly named as “bumpage”—the process of pulling your personal credit report repeatedly in a short time period (usually 1 pull per 1 or 2 days or several times per week). In this way, you can generate a lot of soft inquiries on your credit report and eventually knock hard inquiries off of your credit report. The reason why you can bump off hard inquiries is credit report agencies have only limited space to store your personal information. If you throw in much new information in their system, they tend to delete older information. (Note: only works for inquiries.) However, “Bumpage” only works for TransUnion and Equifax.

How can you generate soft inquiries? There are many credit services on the market which allow you to pull your credit report in a daily manner. The most famous one is TrueCredit.Com and other credit services from TrueCredit but under other names (e.g. NationalCity Identity Protect). If you have an American Express card, you can choose CreditSecure from American Express. My “Know Your Credit Score” post have summarized some credit services on the market for your reference. However, there are many free ways to pull soft inquiries for you. For example, the pre-determination process from HSBC and BOA can generate a soft inquiry on your credit report every time you check for a credit card offer from them. The credit limit increase button in your online account at American Express can also generate a soft inquiry for you for free!

If you use only one credit service and pull your credit report daily, it will takes you about 2 months to start bump your hard inquiries. If you use multiple credit services at the same time, the bumpage process can be accelerated.

However, you might get rejected by TrueCredit or other credit service providers due to your excessive access to your credit report! But it’ highly YMMV.

Important update: This trick is not working for TransUnion now. Some one reported that the bumped inquiries came back on their credit reports again.

With gas prices nearing $4 per gallon, saving money on gas becomes a big concern in our daily life. Hereby I summarize some tips on how to save money on gas.

The top 1 tip is to find out a great gas-rebate credit card for you. Today most of gas-rebate credit cards offer 5% or even more cash back on gasoline purchase. For example, Discover Open Road CardSimplyCash Card offer 5% cash back on gas and auto maintenance purchases; offers 5% cash back on gas, wireless and office supplies purchases; BP visa card offers up to 10% cash back at BP pumps. How to get a great gas-rebate card for you really depends on your credit habit and driving habit. You can check out “Best Gas Card Roundup” and “5 Top Rated Gas Rebate Cards” to get more information.

Find the cheapest gas near you. You can always visit www.gasnearu.com and www.gasbuddy.com to find out which gas station offers the cheapest gas. I’m sure you can save a lot in this way.

Use the recommended gas for your car. Some people may think that higher grade gas might generate better MPG and can save them decent amount of money. Actually, there is no reason to fuel your tank with higher grade gas than what is indicated in the owner’s manual.

Replace a dirty air filter frequently. This is a well-known trick to increase your MPG. According to the Federal Trade Commission, you can always increase your MPG up to 10% by using a new air filter.

Watch out your tires! You should always inflate your tires at a proper psi. And change the tire pressures according to weather changes. Another trick is to make sure your tires are well balanced and rotated.

Use the proper motor oil. I believe that choosing a proper grade of motor oil will help you save gas on the road.

Driving smartly on the road. You should always know that a good driving habit can save you tons of gas in your life! In order to save gas on the road, you should avoid jackrabbit start, properly control your car’s speed, use cruise control on the highway and remove unnecessary weight from your car.

Buy a gas-efficient car. Yes, overall, I think this is the best way to save money on gas only if you need a card. There are many hybrid cars on the market to choose from.

One of my friends got a mail from American Express stating that his SimplyCash and Blue Cash from American Express accounts will not accept new charges because his accounts is under financial review (FR). They request my friend to provide his previous year’s tax return documents and last three months’ bank statements. Otherwise both of his accounts at American Express will be closed. The reason why he got the financial review is he spent a lot of many on his Blue Cash card recently. He used this card to pay all the expenses for a trip to Paris.

I know many of you may have already experienced the famous “financial review”. (Yes, I know you are a good customer: never has a late payment, balance is way lower than 50% of your credit limit.) Many of you may get your account closed even though you provide all of the information they request. Many of you can still use your American Express credit cards after the financial review because their system “feels” that you are financially safe now. I want to summarize some common scenarios about financial review from American Express. And I hope this post would be of any help to those who receive the financial reviews in the near future.

How do you know that you are under financial review?

• Get a call from American Express—telling you that you are under financial review and requesting you to provide financial documents to them.
• Get a mail from American Express— stating that you are under financial review and requesting you to provide financial documents to them.
• When you login your online account, all of your accounts are highlighted in red and your available credit of each of your accounts is $0.
• You can’t use your American Express Cards any longer.

What can/should you do with financial review?

There’s really nothing we can do to deal with the financial review from American Express. All you can do is to comply their requests and fax or mail all of the information they need: tax return documents, bank statements and other supplemental materials. However, there are some tips I think will help you.

1. Pay off all the balances on your credit card accounts immediately and request them to close your accounts. In this way, you accounts are close by consumer but not the credit granter. It’s said that ‘closed by consumer” make your credit report look much better and good for your FICO score. (I don’t believe so.) In this way, you have to say “bye bye” to American Express cards.

2. Mail or fax any materials they requested: tax return documents and bank statements. I have a very good advice here: ask your personal banker to issue an official document (payroll) for you stating you are receiving your salary constantly from your employer. This document is very effective. Plus you should also write a letter by yourself telling them that you like American Express card or more specific, Blue Cash from American Express, Starwood Preferred Guest Card from American Express.

Why do you get financial review?

There is no official saying from American Express. If you look at the credit card agreement, they can close your account for any reason. There are a number of things that can spark the red flag on your credit cards—insurance claims, over use of credits, major charges on one or numerous account, open multiple accounts within a severely limited period of time, ask for credit limit increases every month, etc.

When we talk about how to use our credit cards, we should always know that credit card issuers are curious about the following factors:

• New inquires and new accounts
• Credit utilization
• Payment history
• Number of cards with a balance

Century Bank is running a banking promotion on Memorial Day. If you open a free checking account at Century Bank on Memorial Day, you can get a $100 gas card! The $100 gas card is valid on Memorial Day only. If you choose to open a checking account on other days, you can only get a $77 value gas card. That’s $23 less but still a good deal. The bonus is valid only if you open a checking account at their branches at Texas area. This promotion was advertised on Dallas Morning News on May 23, 2008. (You can see here.) However, we can’t find the details about this promotion on their website. Maybe you can find flyers about this promotion at their branches. (If you can’t find anything about this promotion, you should ask the bankers.)

I suggest you open a Century Free Checking Account which features:

• FREE instantly issued ATM/Debit Card
• FREE ATM usage anytime, anywhere
• FREE Online Banking and FREE Bill Pay
• FREE Pennywise Coin Counting
• No minimum balance requirement
• No monthly service charge
• No per check charge
• Easy-to-balance monthly statement
  (itemized – no image checks with statements)
• Non interest-bearing account
• Only $100.00 to open

Century Bank will pay your ATM fees charged by other banks. Century Bank is a bank based in Texarkana, Texas that offers banking, mortgage, lending and trust services. It has many branches at Dallas and Texarkana areas and is FDIC insured.

This is a guest post from Sarah Scrafford.

Do you have more credit cards than fingers on your hands? Are you finding it difficult to juggle around balances and payments? Thinking of cancelling a few of those pieces of plastic? Stop, and think again – cancelling a credit card can have an adverse impact on your credit scores. Ironic, isn’t it? Just when you want to set your financial aspects in order and watch your spending habits, something as positive as cancelling a credit card seems to have a negative effect on your credit score!

But there’s more than meets the eye to the relationship between a cancelled card and your credit score. Besides other factors, your credit score is calculated by taking the ratio between your outstanding credit and the total credit that’s available to you, which means that lower numbers are better credit scores. When you cancel a card, you also bring down the total credit that’s available to you, which is why your credit score goes up and your credit rating down. But the reverse is also true – the lower your outstanding balance is, the higher your chances are of a better credit score.

If you know how, you can have your cake and eat it too – cancel your cards and not affect your credit score too much. The trick lies in picking and choosing which cards you cancel and how well you manage your finances after the cancellation:

• Hold on to the cards you’ve had for a longer time and cancel the newer ones.
• Cancel cards that have the highest interest rates.
• After you cancel a card, make all your payments in time and avoid maxing out any of your remaining cards. This will, in time, get your credit score back to normal.
• Do not cancel cards that have balances that need to be paid.
• If possible, cancel cards only when all your balances are nil.

Sarah Scrafford is an industry critic, as well as a regular contributor on the subject of credit cards. She invites your questions, comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address: sarah.scrafford25@gmail.com.

“Can You Refuse to Show ID with Visa Credit Card?” turned out to be a very interesting post at MyCardBlog.Com. According to the official document from Visa, you can refuse to show your ID to a store clerk at checkout as long as you’ve signed your credit card. All they can do is to keep your credit card and verify your signature. Actually, most of credit card issuers require that merchants should not check your ID at checkout. The reason is very simple: if you show your ID and credit card to a store clerk, you’re potentially to be an identity theft victim. However, the truth is you are frequently asked to show your photo ID to a store clerk at checkout. The retailers seem this is a good strategy to avoid losses from fraud. (Once a credit card fraud happens, retailers will take the cost while card members will be protected by laws.) You’d better think twice before showing your driver’s license. A driver license and a credit card can give a splenetic store employee a good chance to steal all of your personal information.

The retailers are seeking ways to curb the losses from fraud. Our consumers are trying to avoid identity theft. Yes, you want to protect you privacy and personal security by not revealing you address, birth date, and other information contained on your driver’s license to a stranger. Here are some tips we should know:

1. MasterCard, Visa, and Discover network prohibit retailers from requiring ID with a signed credit card. American Express discourages retailers to require ID at checkout. The information can be found at privacyrights.org/ar/Alert-FS15.htm. If possible, you can print out related material and take it with you.

2. Once you are required to show your ID to a store clerk, you can call MasterCard at 800-MC-ASSIST (800-622-7747); Visa at 800-VISA-911 (800-847-2911); Discover at 800-DISCOVER (800-347-2683); American Express at 800-528-4800. You may let the customer service representatives to convince the store clerk.

3. Refuse to shop at this store. You can always buy the same merchandise at different retailers. You can also shop online!

4. The last choice is to pay with cash, although cash will not bring any additional cash back and insurance protection to what you paid. Anddon’t forget to file a complaint to Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express.