Hi all, I've become so frustrated with this and I'm posting here hoping for help! Me and my father share the same name, he is the first and I'm the 2nd. But for whatever stupid reason (even tho we have different SS numbers) me and my father share the same damn credit file! I don't know how to get it fixed! I tried calling transunion and they were no help at all! The online dispute forms are completely useless! I tried getting a couple credit cards recently and they came back denied because of a bankruptcy being on my report. I'm only 19!! Impossible! I checked my transunion report and it says I've been on file since 1975.. and was showing a lot of my father's information AND mine. It had my employment with Kroger and Sears on there.. PLUS my father's (glasstech), and his bankruptcy. How do I get them to straighten this out??
You are probably not going to solve this mess totally on-line, or even by phone. The system works on the assumption that if it is reported, it is accurate, and if anything matches, such as a reported address, it's you and you are just trying to get out of it. You will want to get it resolved quickly so that the damage it causes does not accumulate, impact your ability to afford college, get a job, afford insurance, or buy a home, and before you start getting hassled by creditors attempting to collect on old debts. You will also want to keep a good paper trail to force the corrections to proceed forward until completed, since you may need to use regulatory, legal, or executive office channels if you hit a wall. You might approach it this way: Get paper copies of your credit reports. Use those to dispute the items that are not yours, in writing, CRRR. You may also want to specifically indicate that they are mixing your father's information with your report. In particular, also dispute those identity items that mix your father's identifying info with yours, such as if his SSN or DOB is showing on your reports. You will also want to use your name in its full form ("2nd", or "Jr.", or whatever you use) in all communication to be able to distinguish your own credit from his. You will probably have to provide copies of your DL and SS card as identification. Also dispute any invalid addresses, such as those you never lived at. The above might get a CRA to realize there are 2 people, which they can split back apart if they choose to, and it may get some items removed, but don't count on it getting everything corrected. If they refuse to remove all credit items that are not yours, file complaints with your state AG, outline the problem and their repeated inability to correct it, and see if that gets better results. That may result in your problem being handled by a different department, that might be better able to work with you to get this fixed, since clearly your DOB alone should be enough to reject most of your father's problem accounts. Should that not be sufficient, (the bankruptcy might be a particular problem, since it is a public record, but may not contain full identifying information sufficient to separate you from your father) you might seek the help of an attorney, since by then it should be clear if normal disputes under FCRA are likely to be effective, and if not, they will have had enough chances, with full documentation from your files, to make their liability of interest to an attorney working on contingency.
Maybe they will fix everything on the first try. But you have to proceed as if they probably won't, and you are already positioned for steps 2 or 3, should the most likely outcome occur.
