First I'd like to say, you all have a great site here with lots of helpful information! I have alot yet to go through, but this late at night, it's a bit overwhelming! lol I'm just beginning the process of trying to clean up my report. I'd like to get to a level where we can start looking at buying a house in a year or two. I figured I should learn all I can now and deal with one issue at a time. I started this process actually 3 years ago. I typed up letters to send to all of the reporting bureaus, but never sent them off. Anyway, on my report the first thing that stood out was an "alias". I have never used an alias. I have no idea where this came from or why? Also under the alias is an address that I did not live at, although I was on the same street at the time. Next thing I notice is that there are two credit cards. Why did I notice this? Because I have never in my 33 years, had a credit card. My motto has been, if I can't pay cash, I don't need it. Here's the big shock though. The accounts were spotless! They both had a $6000.00 limit. One of them had had a balance of $5800.00 that was paid in full in 30 days. The other one had a balance of $1200.00 paid in full and closed. Next, there is a freakin $6.58 collection for a wireless company from '95. I have never had a wireless account until January of this year. My argument to the CRA's was that if I can pay off a $5800.00 balance in 30 days, why would I not pay $6.58, if it were truly my debt? (LOL) You get my point though. So my questions are: 1. Where do you think the alias came from and what's the best way to get it off? 2. Are those 2 credit cards hurting my score? Should I try to get them removed? Although I don't know how I would prove they aren't mine since I have no clue who they belong to. 3. Is it worth it to dispute $6 or should I suck it up and pay it, knowing it's not mine. Thanks in advance for your time.
Are u sure u were not an authorized user from ur parents or some relative?. Bcs if u are those accounts should be from some of them and reported as usually on these cases.
Positive! I have never had access to a credit card in my life. If I had an emergency and didn't have enough cash, I would call mom. She would come put it on her card herself. ( I think that has only happened twice in my life. Once for a doctor copay cause the bank accidently deactivated my debit card, and the other was a special employee shopping night where she worked. I just wasnt allowed to pay myself. So she bought it to get her discount and I paid her cash in the car, but it was only about $150, not $5800.00) One interesting thing though, the alias that shows up on my report is the same as my grandmother on my dad's side. It's her first name, but my last name. Could be a coincidence? She died 2 years ago, but before that I hadn't seen or spoken to her in 20 years. (My father walked out when I was born and has rarely seen me my whole life, so I didn't always know where she was.) She nor my father would have never known where I was, to use the street I lived on. Something else that was funny, that I just discovered. I recently got married so I went to Social Security to get a new card issued for my new name. They had my grandfather on mom's side, listed as my father. I was born in 71 and they said my father was listed correctly until 73. In 73, someone, couldn't tell me who, came in and had it changed to my grandfather. I asked everyone in our family about it, since someone in the family had done it. The only explanation I got was that my father probably had it changed in an effort to get out of paying child support.
The CRAs could care less about your logic in paying off a large balance account as having any bearing on the accuracy of any other account. They just blindly accept whatever any creditor sends them, and distrust or ignore anything you say. Getting the collections account from 1995 off should be straightforward, since it should have fallen off anyway. Since it was not your account, dispute it as not yours. This is in fact true, separate from the obsolescence issue, and with several other accounts that are also not yours, you may later need to deal with getting someone elses records unmixed from yours. If you intend to buy a house in the future, you will need to establish a history of a positive credit record of your own. Few people can pay cash for their first house, and the longer your history of good credit payments, the lower your interest rate.
Since there is some evidence that your father may have tampered with some of your identity records, is there any possibility that he might have obtained credit in your name? He would have had complete information to do it with, and with your thin credit file, there would be little information from your own activities to raise a red flag with either creditors or you. How recently were the 2 credit cards opened and paid off?
Well now that I say that, I can't find them. I'm looking at a report someone pulled for me 6 months ago and I don't see them listed now. Let me pull my own today or tomorrow, and I'll see if they still come up. Might have been the type he ran, because it looks very much different from what I'm used to seeing. Also on this one I'm looking at, there's a line item that I don't understand. It says Fair Isaac Model Score for (my name) SSN:XXX-XX-XXXX Score = 9002 Derived credit risk score not calculated due to model exclusion criteria What does that mean, due to? What is the 9002? Thanks!
