For more than four years, it seems that the credit reports of both my wife and I are immune to material errors -- the biggest inaccuracies in our reports are merely a wrong zip code and a wrong birthday, and over the time, we enjoyed best ratess in mortgage and floods of juicy credit card offers.
However, my wife's lucky streak ended recently.
Lately I activated one-year free credit monitoring service at Experian for my wife (thanks to promotional offers in Microsoft Money 2007). The credit monitoring service includes a free credit report, unlimited credit score update and analysis over 12 months. The initial pull of credit score and report surprised us a lot: my wife's credit score was only 661, and there is a collection item on the credit report. At that moment, I started to wonder how the "universal default" clause in our massive credit card inventory will play against us now that we have over $40,000 in l0% or low APR balance transfers.
A closer look at the collection item turned an account we have no idea whatsoever:
ALLIED INTERSTATE INC.
Agency Address: 3000 Corporate Exchange Dr, Columbus, OH 432317689 (336) 333-3100
Date Reported: 05/2006
Date Assigned: 12/2005
Creditor Classification:
Creditor Name: CINGULAR WIRELESS
Accounts Number: 3483XXXX
Account Owner: Individual Account.
Original Amount Owned: $226
Date of 1st Delinquency: 10/2005
Balance Date: 05/2006
Balance Owned: $226
Date of Last Activity : n/a
Status Date: 05/2006
Status: D - Unpaid
Comments: N/A
In fact, we have never been a Cingular customer (we currently keep two mobile numbers with Verizon Wireless with $1.00 monthly maintenance fee, and we used to be a Virgin Mobile customer.), and we've never been contacted about this account, nor any collection activities!
I immediately turned to the national free credit report service to pull out my wife's credit report at Equifax and Transunion. The Equifax report was contaminated with the same collection information, while the Transunion report is error-free. On the brighter side, all three reports seem to indicate this collection item is more a clerical error instead of blatant identity theft -- there are no credit inquiries from unknown parties, and we don't have any unfamiliar accounts except for this one.
Confident that we shouldn't be penalized for something we didn't do, and we stand a good chance to right the wrong, we initiated credit dispute process with both Experian and Equifax. Both credit bureaus allow online dispute, but I have to say the credit dispute experience at Experian is much better than that of Equifax:
- Experian: After submitting a form, I was provided a confirmation number. Within three days, I received an email indicating the collection item has been removed from my credit report. After the removal, my wife credit score was boosted from 661 to 728.
- Equifax: Unlike Experian's, the online credit dispute form at Equifax does not leave space for any verbatim feedback, nor does it provide a confirmation number that allows you to track the dispute progress online. Now I am waiting for early November to retrieve our postal mails from our UPS mailbox, and hopefully the dispute will turn in our favor.
(P.S. We haven't been affected by "universal default" clause yet, and probably never will.)