MyCardBlog » Credit Score

Free Equifax Credit Watch Silver

David — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:00:28 +0000

This must be one of the hottest topics on the web yesterday. Ocean National Bank is offering free credit monitor service for its customers. Anyone with a promotion code can use it to get free credit monitor service at Equifax, one of the three credit bureaus. Since the promotion code is open to everyone, everyone can use it to get a free 2-year credit monitor service from Equifax and Ocean National Bank will pay for you.

This promotion is listed on the Ocean National Bank’s front page (https://www.eocean.com). About the free credit monitoring service can be found at https://www.eocean.com/freemonitoring.html. Apparently, the service is offered to Ocean National Bank deposit customers only. As they indicated:

In our continuing effort to provide our customers with enhanced privacy protection, we are pleased to offer all of our personal deposit customers free Equifax Credit Watch Silver.

Equifax Credit Watch Silver offers you:

Email alerts within 7 days of key changes to your Equifax credit file to help protect against credit card fraud (alerts triggered by the lender’s report to Equifax)
Wireless alerts option
“No news is good news” monthly message if there are no alerts
One free Equifax Credit Report with a discount on additional reports
$2,500 in identity theft insurance with $250 deductible (some limits and exclusions apply)
Premium customer care, 8AM–3AM, 7 days a week
Identity Theft Protection news and tips

The truth is there is a leaked promotion code with which you can enroll in the Equifax Credit Monitor service without any payment for two years. Click the link and you will get a free promotion code. With that code, you can click here to finish the enrollment process without any payment information. So you do NOT need to be an Ocean National bank customer to enroll in the free credit monitor service provided by Equifax.

About Ocean National Bank: A a locally managed commercial bank headquartered in Portsmouth, N.H., with $2 billion in assets and 42 branches in New Hampshire and southern Maine with more than 150 years of operation history.

People without any relationship with Ocean National Bank reported successfully enrolled in the credit monitor service. Personally, I think this is a good deal to catch.

Innovis—The Fourth Credit Reporting Agency

David — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:00:58 +0000

I have talked a lot about hoe to get your personal credit report and business credit report. For many years, there were only 3 credit reporting agencies: TransUnion, Experian and Equifax. However, actually, there is another credit reporting agency: Innovis. Innovis is the 4th and not so well-known credit reporting agency in the United States. Currently, there are only a limited number of companies are using the date from Innovis.

It’s necessary to know what Innovis is and what Innovis can do.

A small credit reporting agency can also have the power of damaging your personal credit. Innovis records you mortgage payment information from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Innovis became a major player at the beginning of 2001, when mortgage financing titans Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac began requiring their mortgage servicers to report borrowers’ payment histories to the new credit reporting agency. The federal government also reports to Innovis about individuals who are late with debt payments to the feds.

Unlike the other big three credit bureaus, Innovis doesn’t sell your credit histories to lenders, insurers and potential employers. Innovis is specialized on build mailing lists that creditors use to determine pre-approve offers. So it’s very important to bear in mind that adverse information on your Innovis credit report, accurate or not, could prevent you from getting excellent credit offers via mail.

Innovis generally offers two products to creditors: FailSafe and New Movers. FailSafe is a database containing names of consumers who are late or who have been late on debt payments. New Movers is a monthly list of people who have reported a change of address to Innovis.

How to get a credit report from Innovis?

Innovis currently offers two convenient ways to request a copy of your Innovis Credit Report: by phone or by mail.

Phone: Call 1-800-540-2505 and after some verification processes, you can get a credit report within 3 business days.

Mail: You can complete the Credit Report Request Form and mail it to Innovis at the address provided below:

Innovis
Attention: Consumer Assistance
P.O. Box 1358
Columbus, Ohio 43216-1358

In the form, you have to provide the following information:

Full name
Social Security Number
Date of birth (month/day/year)
Proof of current address, such as a current utility bill, lease arrangement or rental receipt
One copy of a legible government-issued identification card, such as a driver’s license, state ID card, or military ID card

It’s important to remember that the annualcreditreport.com currently doesn’t offer free credit report from Innovis. However, the annualcreditreport.com is the only place you can pull your credit report from TransUnion, Experian and Equifax for free!

Authorized User Accounts OK Again

David — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:00:34 +0000

We all know that, Fair Isaac, which created the popular FICO credit score, is making some small adjustments to the way it calculates American people’s credit scores. My previous report pointed out that the authorized user account will not be calculated in your personal FICO score. But according to the latest news, Fair Isaac will re-consider the new change and will take your authorizes user account as a factor of your FICO score. This might be good news for those who want to take advantage of policy.

Last month, Fair Isaac announced that its latest credit scoring system, “FICO 08,” will include authorized user accounts when calculating someone’s FICO credit score. Some credit repair companies used this policy and offered a way for folks with bad credit to raise their FICO scores. You would pay thousands of dollars to get added as an authorized user to the credit card of someone with a great credit history. When that account showed up on the authorized user’s credit report, the person’s credit score would rise. Normally, the authorized user will not receive the credit card.

However, it could be a long wait for us to get the new FICO 08 score. Fair Isaac is still revising the model with the three major credit reporting agencies, after which the company will focus on getting lenders to test and use new FICO. About the authorized user issue, it has been long known that if you have an account with a primary account owner with super credit performance, your credit score will be improved. Could people still do so by getting family members with great credit to add them as authorized users and improve their own credit performance? It seems that Fair Isaac will take this into consideration and make some necessary changes.

If you look at how FICO score are calculated, you would find that you can benefit from being an authorized user in the length of credit history and amount owed which take 45% of your FICO score. But there is still a risk— what if the primary account holders make a mistake? Authorized users could see their credit scores plummet if the primary cardholders default on the accounts.

It’s a really new policy and we should wait until the final result comes out.

Paydex Score: Your Business Credit Score

David — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:00:29 +0000

We all know that a credit card issuer will look at your credit score, usually referred as the FICO score, before issuing you a credit card. Actually, business lenders use a similar approach or credit scoring system to determine your business credit performance and decide whether or not to give you credit.

Although there are many business credit reporting agencies entered in the market in the past decade, including Experian, the Paydex score from Dun & Bradstreet remains the primary source for business credit scores and reports. A Paydex score is a number from Dun & Bradstreet that is an indicator of your business operation. The Paydex score is the business equivalent to your personal credit score. This score plays an important role in determining whether you get a loan (and loan rate & loan amount etc) and how other businesses deal with yours.

According to Dun & Bradstreet (D&B), the Paydex score is:

D&B’s unique dollar-weighted numerical indicator of how a firm paid its bills over the past year, based on trade experiences reported to D&B by various vendors. The D&B Paydex score ranges from 1 to 100, with higher scores indicating better payment performance.

More detailed explanation about the Paydex score:

100 - Payments are received prior to date of invoice (Anticipated)
90 - Payments are received within trade discount period (Discount)
80 - Payments are received within terms granted (Prompt)
70 - 15 Days Beyond Terms
60 - 22 Days Beyond Terms
50 - 30 Days Beyond Terms
40 - 60 Days Beyond Terms
20 - 120 Days Beyond Terms
UN - Unavailable

You can view a sample Paydex report from here.

How to establish your business credit report?

You can star to build your Paydex score by enrolling in the CreditBuilder or ScoreBuilder programs offered by D&B, but this will cost you some money. Or you can apply for a DUNS (Data Universal Numbering System) number which is an unique nine-digit numbering system that is used to identify a business. and use it to apply for a small line of credit at a company that reports to D&B regularly.

How to boost your Paydex score?

The most important thing is to keep a Paydex account active. And the best way to boost your Paydex score is to pay all of your bills early. Because this score is directly related to how you pay your bills. Or you can pay small bills later but pay large bills early. This might also be helpful but not so good as both pay them early.

How ever, you should put in mind that applying for a busines line of credit is different from the procedure for applying for a business credit card. The application process for a business card usually requires owners to provide their own ITIN or SSN, that is, credit issuers will still pull your personal credit report instead of business credit report. To get a business credit card, you have to maintain a good FICO score. That’s also why individauls can apply for business credit cards.

Bad Credit Can Hurt You In Many Ways

David — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:00:38 +0000

You already know that when you submit an application for a credit card, the credit card issuer will check your credit score and then decide whether or not to approve your application. If you have a really low credit score, you will be declined. If you have a solid credit, then you probably will get approved. You might also know that if you have good credit score, your mortgage rate will be lower than those without good credit. It seems bad credit can also get something for you but with higher costs. But, actually, there’re many ways that a bad credit can hurt you.

Job

It’s not surprised that your employers will keep an eye on your credit performance. Today more than 60% of companies will check the candidates’ credit score before they issue the offer to them. The reason behind this is employers think the credit problem might cause tension and pressure at work. They may also think if you’re not good at managing your personal credit, you can’t do your job well.

Auto Insurance

Some of you might still don’t know that some insurance companies will pull your credit report when you request a quote from them. They use your credit performance as a factor to decide the rate you can get from them. I have a personal experience with GEICO. When I wanted to quote online at www.geico.com, I have to enter my SSN on the form. Then I asked them why they required my SSN. They replied with:

GEICO, like many property and casualty insurers, uses credit information as part of our underwriting process. We use this data because of its very strong, statistical correlation with future losses. Using this information, along with our other underwriting criteria, allows us to keep our rates competitive. The Fair Credit Reporting Act specifically gives insurers permissible purpose to obtain credit data when used for underwriting.

The good point is insurance inquiries do not affect your credit rating and do not count against you.

Many other insurance companies like AAA will also pull your credit report even they don’t have your SSN.

So, the fact is, bad credit might cause higher auto insurance rates.

Cell Phones

Cell phone providers are very strict with your credit performance. If your credit score is not good, you have to pay a certain amount of deposit before they can open a line for you. I know T-Mobile will require $500 or $250 deposit for those without good credit. If your credit is not good, you can only have one line at T-Mobile. If you pay your bills on time in the next 6 months, they may allow you to have one more line (family plan). Or some may only try the pay-as-you-go plans.

Apartment Hunting

Nowadays most rental property companies may require you to give them your SSN and they will run a credit check to see whether you have bankruptcy history, collections or other serious credit behaviors. They might reject your applications if your credit performance doesn’t meet their requirement.

Utilities

Whenever you move into a new apartment, you have to open electricity, water or gas services. When you handle out your SSN, the utility companies will check your credit report. If your credit is not up to their expect, you have to pay a certain amount of deposit. Of course, some of them might add the deposit on your monthly bills.

Above mentioned are little known places that a bad credit might hurt you. Bad credit is no longer a situation that can be isolated from other areas of your life. If you can maintain a good credit performance, you are a step ahead of others.

Prevent New Account Fraud by Credit Freeze

David — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:00:41 +0000

One of the most scariest types of identity theft is new account fraud. It happens when an identity thief steal your personal information, open a series of new credit card accounts, loans or other account under your name. According to a new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) study, 8.3 million U.S. adults become victims of ID theft each year. Consumers Union estimates that this amounts to more than 22,000 victims per day and 15 victims per minute. After you are a victim of ID theft, the out of pocket cost varies widely but 10% percent of all ID theft victims reported costs of $1,200 or more, and 10% of victims of new accounts and other frauds reported out of pocket costs of $3,000. One quarter of all new accounts victims reported expenses of at least $1,000. More than half of consumers (56%) who suffered new account fraud did not discover the fraud until after the first month, and for 24% of consumers, it took more than six months to discover new account fraud.

I wrote a post about credit freeze and mentioned how to use credit freeze to prevent identity theft. Today I’m going to write more details about this. Because credit freeze is very useful to prevent ID theft. A credit freeze, also known as a security freeze, credit report freeze, a credit report lock down, a credit lock down, or a credit lock, allows an individual to control how a U.S. consumer reporting agency (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion) is able to sell his or her data. The credit freeze locks the data at the consumer reporting agency until an individual gives permission for the release of the data. In this way, a credit freeze allow us to stop thieves from getting credit under our names. When we choose to freeze our credit, a business will not be able to open new accounts for a thief until you permit to do so. Placing a credit freeze does not affect your credit score – nor does it keep you from getting your free annual credit report, or from buying your credit report or score.

When you place a security freeze on your file, you will be provided a personal identification number or password to use if you choose to remove the security freeze from your file or authorize the temporary release of your credit report for a specific person or period after the security freeze is in place. The cost of placing, temporarily lifting, and removing a credit freeze also varies. Identity theft victims might get free credit freeze in many states while other consumers might have to pay $10 for this service. As the credit freeze laws varies according to states, you can find more helpful information from here. Once you decide to temporarily lift your freeze, you have to contact Equifax, TransUnion or Experian and provide the following information:

Sufficient identification to verify your identity.
Your personal identification number or password provided by the credit reporting company.
A statement that you choose to remove the security freeze from your file or that you authorize the reporting agency to temporarily release your consumer report.

It’s very obvious that a credit freeze is very helpful to keep an identity thief from opening most new accounts in your name. However, it’s not an all-purpose solution to all kind of identity theft. It will not protect you from an identity thief from using your current credit cards or other accounts. It is also helpless when a identity thief wants to use services that don’t do a ID check in your name. If there’s identity theft already going on when you place the credit freeze, the freeze won’t be able to stop it. You should also consider the cost and hassle that credit freeze might bring in before you place a credit freeze on your credit report.

Up to 9 Months Credit Monitoring From TransUnion

David — Sat, 31 May 2008 13:00:20 +0000

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?

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.
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.
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.

FreeCreditReport.Com Is Not Free!

David — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 13:00:11 +0000

Today I received an email from one of my readers asking about the free credit report stuff. He seems to order a “free” credit report from FreeCreditReport.Com after he watched the ad in the TV. Then he realized that he was billed $14.95 per month. Yes, it’s not free! If you google with “freecreditreport.com”, you can see a lot of ripoff reports about freecreditreport.com. Be careful then!

I have seen a lot of commercials from FreeCreditReport.Com including the popular commercial Dream Girl. However, the truth is FreeCreditReport.Com is not free! Don’t be fooled! The only website you can get your free credit report is AnnualCreditReport.Com which is supported by the federal government.

Here I put some of the famous commercials by FreeCreditReport.Com together. I don’t want them to fool people again.

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This one is not!!!

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Compare Your Credit Score with Warren Buffett’s Score

David — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:00:02 +0000

It’s interesting to see that Warren Buffett has a FICO credit score of 712 according to the Fortune Magazine. (2008, March 31, The Oracle’s Credit Crisis) Well, how can that be? We all know that Warren Buffett is one of the wealthiest men on the planet?

But believe me or not, if a bank ever denies Warren Buffet’s application for a credit card, Warren will go on CNBC and say that bank has really bad economic outlook and then watch and laugh as its stock price dips 10% immediately. Even Warren has a very low credit score, no banks will refuse to provide financial services to him. Maybe he is also a Centurion Card holder.

Anyway, regardless whether you are a billionaire or not, you FICO credit score always tells your lenders the same fact: based on your past credit actions, how likely are you to become seriously late in repaying your creditors during the next couple of years? Your income or net worth aren’t factored into the FICO score – only your history of paying back your debts as documented in your credit report.

Want to have a better credit score than Warren? Tips to boost your credit score:

1. Never pay your bills after due date—never leave a late payment in your credit profile.

2. Never carry a huge balance on a single credit card—increase your balance to credit limit ratio will hurt your score.

3. Never open a new account frequently—open a new account when it’s necessary or when you’re doing AOR.

4. Always check your credit card statement—find out any suspicious credit fraud activities or identity thefts.

5. Always check your credit report—you can find a lot of ways to access your credit report for free.

How Can You Get Your Credit Score for Free?

David — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:00:21 +0000

I have many individual posts about how to get your free credit score and credit report. You can get a free copy of your credit report every year from www.annualcreditreport.com which is a government supported website. However, this website doesn’t provide credit score. Then how can you get your credit score for free? Let me tell you……

WaMu Platinum Visa Credit Card

Actually, this card was formerly issued by Providian which was then acquired by WaMu one year ago. From then on, all the WaMu credit cards will provide free credit score to the card holders. You can see your credit score once you log in you online account at www.wamucards.com. The credit score is based on your TransUnion credit report and is updated every month. Recently, they are sending out some invitations with sign-up bonus. Some readers report that if you don’t use this card for a while, they will close your account due to inactivity.

I have to mention that WaMu just launched a new credit card—ESPN Total Access Visa Card. This card is easy to get. If you can’t receive the invitation from WaMu and want to take advantage of the free credit score service, you can try for this card.

CreditKarma.Com

I have an introduce about this website here. They provide FAKO credit score based on your TransUnion credit report. (Although they claim that they can pull your credit report from any of 3 credit bureaus, you’d better believe that they only use TransUnion credit report.) Yes, it’s free! They will not charge you for your free credit score. But they have you credit status on hand. They can make money by corporate with many financial institutes by promoting some financial services to you.

Prosper and Lending Club

The above two mentioned websites are famous person-to-person lending clubs. They will pull your credit report, if you sign up as a borrower there. Instead of a credit score, they will give you a credit grade. By referring to the credit grade, you can roughly know your credit score. If you have a very good credit score, your default loan rate will be much lower than those with bad credit grade. You may not familiar with these websites. Currently, they are offering $25 sign-up bonus.

E-Loan.Com

You can also get a free credit score at eloan.com! It’s very simple. Click this link to eloan.com. You will see a variety of credit services provided by eloan. But they are not free! At the bottom of that page, you will see ” Free Credit Score (Credit Score Only)“. That’s not FICO score and is based on your credit profile at Experian. In fact, it’s supposed to help you to choose some better mortgage rate. It’s valid only for once. You can choose when to use it.

I hope this post will be of any help for you all!

MyCardBlog » Credit Score

Free Equifax Credit Watch Silver

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Innovis—The Fourth Credit Reporting Agency

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Authorized User Accounts OK Again

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Paydex Score: Your Business Credit Score

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Bad Credit Can Hurt You In Many Ways

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Prevent New Account Fraud by Credit Freeze

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Up to 9 Months Credit Monitoring From TransUnion

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FreeCreditReport.Com Is Not Free!

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Compare Your Credit Score with Warren Buffett’s Score

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How Can You Get Your Credit Score for Free?

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