About Me

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

I Ordered My Credit Report


I ordered my credit report from Equifax a couple of weeks ago and it came in  the mail yesterday. This was my first time ever ordering it so I didn't really know what to expect. The creditor stuff was all correct (Mastercard, Student Line of Credit, Government Student Loan, Cell Phone). However my personal information was sooo wrong, such as where I lived and where I was employed. It was information from when I started university 6 years ago!

I've heard a statistic that about 80% of credit reports have something wrong in it. I am surprised at that but it seems to be true! I would order your credit reports, you can get two per year free. One from Equifax and one from TransUnion. I am in the process of ordering one from TransUnion now however they take a lot more effort than Equifax. Although now that Equifax has some inaccuracies I now have to put in more effort by mailing two pieces of ID in order to have the inaccuracies corrected. Hopefully that will help me when I need to apply for credit.

It's too bad that you need to pay for the credit score, as that is what I am really interested in. Although I guess it's good to have the report corrected first!

6 comments:

  1. Did you order it online? phone? or mail it in?

    I have never done this before and frankly, not sure what to do.

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  2. It took some searching through the sites, they really want you to purchase from them however you DO get one free credit report from each per year.

    I called Equifax. With TransUnion you have to mail it with a form you download along with two pieces of ID http://www.transunion.ca/docs/personal/Consumer%20Disclosure%20Request%20Form%20_en.pdf

    Equifax http://www.equifax.com/contact_us/en_ca. From there you can either call the number on that site, or fill out a form and mail or fax it to the address on the site. I called and it was very easy, all automated.

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  3. Aside from the incorrect address info, what was the most interesting thing you learned?

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  4. Ahh I just noticed they even have my birthdate wrong! The year is off!!

    I kind of knew where I stood on things. Always making at least a minimum payment if not paying things off completely. So I had R1 for my credit card, I1 for my student loan and line of credit, and 01 for my cell phone, all which mean "paid as agreed and up to date."

    I'm not sure what the credit score really tells you, if it JUST gives you a number or tells you WHY you are at a particular number. I know I won't be as high as I could be on that because I had at least one bounced cheque from second year, and I went into overdraft by accident last year. It didn't say any of this on my credit report though.

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  5. Going into your overdraft won't affect your credit score :) Neither will bouncing a cheque as far as I know.

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