Best Online Credit Check

Recently a friend called me. He and his wife have applied to refinance their mortgage and get an ociated line of credit. They were turned down for the line of credit. And my friend didn’t understand why, because he thought his credit history should’ve been perfect. Last 20 years he and his wife were always working, generating good 6-figure income. They bought their house 15 years ago. They were always paying bills on time, were not carrying any balances on their credit cards.

But – they were not monitoring their credit reports.

I told him to go to Fair, Isaac & Company web site ( http://www.myfico.com ) – and select an option to get 3 reports (from Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) and 3 FICO scores – and then call me back.

What he found was quite interesting. The scores were ranging from 720 to 780. They were different, because different reports contained different information.

On one of the reports (TransUnion) he found an 18 year old tax lien which reflected an IRS error made 18 years ago. He thought this record was removed – but it had somehow re-appeared. Unpaid tax liens can stay on credit report forever. Luckily for him he still kept an old letter from IRS confirming that this was a mistake.

Second problem was a negative record placed on his account by a collector for homeowner’s insurance company. 2.5 years ago they switched insurance. Insurance was paid by the bank (escrow). There was a misunderstanding in dates between the two insurance companies (old and new) which they resolved between themselves and the bank. But somehow a negative record was placed on my friend’s record – and never was corrected or removed. The record stated that he never paid the required balance.

There was a 3rd record – late record for a Macys credit card which got there because they accidentally threw away the envelope with the bill thinking that it was a yet another promotion from Macys.

I have advised my friend how to resolve these problems. All he needed to do was to send several certified letters and make several phone calls. In ~20 days the problems were resolved.

This example demonstrates several points.

(1) You never know what can appear or re-appear on your reports – you have to check them at least once a year.
(2) Monitoring just one report is not enough, because errors may appear on other reports. You should periodically check all 3.
(3) Once the error was resolved – it can reappear many years later. So keep records for long-long time.

One more thing. Note that I have recommended Fair Isaac’s web site ( myfico.com ) and not any of the CRAs web sites (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion). The reason for this is that CRAs tend to offer their own scores, which are similar to FICO, but sometimes may differ significantly. For example, TransUnion offers TrueCredit score. Experian offers VantageScore (which has score range 501-990 as opposed to FICO 300-850). When you are applying for a mortgage – you really need to know your true FICO score, because this is what all mortgage companies are using today. Fair Isaac company is a public company traded on New York Stock Exchange. They gross about 1 billion dollars per year, employ more than 3,000 people, and have offices all around the world. They were providing services for more than 50 years (since 1956), and providing credit scoring for almost 40 years (since 1970). Today they are a defacto standard for credit scores.

For more information visit http://www.101CreditRepair.com.

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