Equifax
Monitoring one’s credit report is a good idea from time to time. Even if you haven’t been denied credit recently, it is always a good idea to examine your credit report and look for discrepancies that could stand in the way of obtaining credit in the future. And one company that has been helping businesses make credit decisions for a long time is Equifax, one of the best- known names in credit reporting. Let’s take a look at the ways Equifax can help consumers:
What Does This Service Offer?:
Equifax’s credit reports are broken down into the following areas:
Personal Information- Here, you will find your address history, your social security number, your birth date, and a list of places you have worked.
Creditor Information- This forms the bulk of the report and it includes a detailed list of the credit cards and personal loans opened in your name; the date they were established; the credit limit (if any); the present balance; the account status; the date reported; the account type (revolving, installment, or mortgage); and the first several digits of the account number with the ending numbers x’d out, for security reasons.
Credit Inquiries- In this section, you will find a breakdown of companies that have inquired into your credit record.
Public Records- This includes judgments, liens on properties, bankruptcies, and other legal concerns.
Educational Tips- This part of the report is intended to help individuals better understand their credit report, with instructions on how to read and interpret the data contained within.
Other Services:
Besides the standard credit report, Equifax offers many other services to meet your credit inquiring needs. You can purchase another credit report that also includes your FICO credit score; a credit watch report that notifies you whenever any large transaction takes place in your files; and a three in one report that lets you examine your credit report from the three major reporting agencies. And as an extra way to generate a little more revenue for itself, Equifax even offers a home evaluator service that investigates the buying and selling activity for specific properties.
Service Fees:
Purchasing the standard credit report through Equifax presently costs $9.95. However, if your state has been added to the growing list of states that offer a free credit report (eventually, every state will offer this), then you can obtain a standard report free of charge.
Other reports carry higher price tags. The Three in One report, for instance, currently sells for $29.95 and the Score Report (the one that includes your FICO score) retails for $14.95. Credit watch reports sell for as little as $4.95 per month and can be purchased for multiple numbers of months with a small discount included if you purchase a full year.
Final Thoughts:
Equifax is one of the best- known credit reporting agencies on the market. It was the company I first turned to, roughly fifteen years ago, when I took a look at my credit report for the first time. Back then, my report was overflowing with credit cards and student loans. Today, the student loans are gone and the credit cards are a much smaller percentage of my total debt. They have been replaced by larger loans, like mortgage and home equity lines of credit.
Equifax reports can sometimes seem confusing when you first look at them. But a quick rundown of the instructions will make the report easier to understand. The personal information is the most straightforward. But I also found that this was where the most inaccuracies were found. Among the five different addresses shown on my report (present address plus four previous addresses), two of them were places I never lived and one was one of the previous addresses of my parents. My employment history was all screwed up too, with several recent employers missing and some old employers from more than fifteen years ago still showing. These things are not as critical as the creditor and payment histories, but it is still a good idea to get this part of the report cleaned up if you have the time.
The most critical part of one’s credit report is the payment history because it is from this that creditors will asses your risk, determine worthiness for extension of credit, and decide on finance rates to charge. Creditors remain on the report for seven years from the date of last activity. If bankruptcy has been filed, it will remain on the report for ten years. Inquires that companies have made into your credit record stay on the report for two years. On my report, the dollar levels of the present balances, the last activity dates, and the type of credit were all accurate. But what wasn’t accurate was that some of my old creditors were still showing up with open lines of credit. There were four such records on my personal account. This makes it look like I have four credit cards and/or other types of credit that had been approved a long time ago, were paid down to zero, and are still open for purchasing. This isn’t true, and I need to begin work on getting these errors off of my report. True, it isn’t as bad as having a record of late payments and bad debts. But excessive open credit still counts against your credit score and it can make some creditors think twice before extending credit to you.
If you notice an error on your credit report like I did, you need to take steps to remove it as soon as possible. Equifax provides the tools necessary to launch an investigation and eliminate inaccuracies. But the methods available will not always work for all people. The simplest way to report discrepancies is through the company web site. However, the on- line method will not work for all states. To see if your area is capable of this type of investigative submission, there is a place in the site listed under “Investigation Methods” where you can enter your zip code to begin the process. If your area isn’t covered, you will get an error message notifying you that you must call a toll- free number instead. This is what happened to me when I tried to clean up my credit report on- line. I was stopped and forced to make a phone call because my area is one of those that cannot submit errors via the on- line web site, Equifax.com.
Equifax allows access to your credit report for a full thirty days after you acquire it, either through purchase or through a free offer. I got my report free of charge by linking through the web site annualcreditreport.com. Now that I have my report, I can logon to Equifax.com any time for the next thirty days and examine it whenever I like. Reports can be printed and investigations launched at any point. Just make sure you have your confirmation number (printed on your report) handy before you begin to clean up your report.
The standard report offered free of charge through annualcreditreport.com (or that costs $9.95 otherwise) doesn’t include your credit score. Equifax teases you by letting you see your credit history and making you curious about your actual FICO score. But if you want to give in to temptation, it will cost you another $6.50. Sometimes, you can get a fair idea what your score will be simply by examining your credit report. The average person has a few blemishes on his/her report and has a score in the low 600’s. By comparing your credit history to the average, you should have a general idea what your score will be without paying the additional charge to have it e-mailed to you.
When you first logon to Equifax, don’t be surprised if you have to answer a few security questions about yourself before you can proceed. There are many questions and you need to answer only two of them to move on. But if your credit record is a mess, this might be more difficult than it seems. For example, when I tried to logon for the first time, one of the sets of security questions I chose to answer involved my residencies. Equifax asked me to simply enter the house number of one of the places I have lived in the past. Not all of the places were displayed to choose from- only three of them displayed and two were places I have never lived before. I couldn’t answer those. I could accurately answer only one of them. So, I had to go back to the security questions page and select another area to answer questions. I selected the credit account section where I was asked to enter the account number for one of a select group of personal accounts (again, not all were there- only a select group). Once again, several of the accounts listed were ones I no longer use and thus I could not answer the questions. Luckily, one of them was my American Express card, which I happened to have in my wallet. I answered this question and was allowed to proceed to my report.
Equifax, as a whole, is a decent credit reporting agency. My report was in pretty good shape with only a few errors. I was unable to submit my error report on- line and had to call instead, taking a little more time out of my day than I had planned. But this is still a good reporting agency overall. I was satisfied with what I got and it helped point me in the right direction toward cleaning up my personal credit record.