Thought I'd share an amusing finding today. I've been having success (so far!) with experian online disputes / creditexpert. I log in today and find my score increased 1 point. It was due to an address dispute. Addresses listed were: a)my parents home address where I grew up. b)an apt. I lived at for 2 yrs. c)my current home of 8 yrs. I tried to add an apt. number to the second address just to clean things up and experian deleted it outright! So don't forget about disputing addresses...they could easily add up to one or two hard inquiries.
So don't forget about disputing addresses...they could easily add up to one or two hard inquiries. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CRA'S CAN'T ADD "HARD" INQUIRES...they offer NO credit cards or loans...
CRA'S CAN'T ADD "HARD" INQUIRES...they offer NO credit cards or loans... ***************** OK, I guess that was perhaps slightly confusing. I didn't mean literally adding hard inquiries. More like "equal to" in the sense of points against your credit score.
I just disputed my names (all 8 of them... lots of misspellings. Damn that Miss Spelling. When I get ahold of her...) AND disputed 10 addresses which were wrong- some I never even lived there!! My score went up two points. Woohoo.
Okay, while we are at it, what about employers? I have worked for the same company for 3 years, but we were bought by a large corporation in 1999 and finally just this May we offically (due to regs and laws; I don't understand all the legal stuff that had to be done) were able to call ourselves the new corporation name. Now I have the old name as my former employer and the new name as my current even though they are the same company. On another credit report the order is flipped around. Doesn't scoring also get based on time of employment? My husband works for a Japanese company with an unusual name. It gets mispelled frequently. The correct spelling is his current employer and the mispelled shows as a previous employer. He has been with his company almost 5 years. Are we losing points? Should we have this disputed and corrected? Does it even matter?
I've read somewhere that It's not so important how many employers you've worked at, but how long you've been working in the same field. Also, when applying for my mortgage, it was brought up that it's good to have at least 2yrs at your current employer. But for specifics, I'm afraid I'm not smart enough...anyone else care to field this one?
I agree with the mortgage part of your post and as far as that goes, the lender verifies via written correspondence rather than the credit report. It is the length of time in career field and not length of employment with employer. However, I believe the FICO model supposedly takes into account your length of employment and that is scored from your credit report. I know nothing with FICO has any rhyme or reason but since the address issue was brought up, I thought I would throw out the employment issue. Of course, this could open a can of worms.
