# Credit Rating



## aldur1 (Aug 17, 2011)

Hi everyone, I have a question about reviewing one's credit rating and history.

In December, a company called Credit Alert Plus contacted me about signing up for a service that would allow me to review my credit rating and history. I decided to try their first month for free. I cancelled afterwards because I didn't want to pay for another monthly fee. 

This was my first experience with reviewing my own credit report and after doing some online research there seems to be a few ways to review your credit report. I have some questions on how some of you guys review your own report.

1. Is there any difference in the content between the free credit report and the credit report you can pay for?

2. Seems like the Equifax and TransUnion are the two main credit bureaus. Are their any advantages with using one over the other? Should the content in their respective reports contain identical information?

3. How often do you monitor your credit report?

4. Lastly anyone here sign up for a credit monitoring service like the one provided by Credit Alert Plus? Are their any benefits to these services or is it "A fool and his money are soon parted"? 

Thank you in advance!


----------



## orange (Oct 23, 2011)

Hi Aldur,

I am no expert but I do have experience with this, so I will share my thoughts.

1. The free credit report provides the exact same information in terms of your credit history as the report with a fee, except that it _*does not include a credit score*_. The free report will list your creditors, amounts of credit with each, balances owing, length of history and whether you are in good standing with your payments. It will also list info on bancruptcies, etc. and who has made hard and soft hits on your credit file. This is is all the information you need to ensure that your credit history is *accurate and up to date*. The paid report includes your credit score as well as an interpretation of what that means (i.e. you have a high score so banks should give you a favourable rate, etc.). This number is also *a snapshot in time*...it fluctuates easily. I find this useful only right before I apply for credit, to give me an idea of where I stand for negotiations.

2. The reports *SHOULD* be the same, but they are often NOT. I find TransUnion to be less up to date than Equifax, but that is only my personal experience. I would recommend getting the free report from both to compare, and if you want a credit score, purchase a report from just one (I use Equifax when running checks on tennants, and most others I know do as well).

3. I usually obtain my own report once a year, and if I am going to be shopping for credit (not very often!). Your credit score can change significantly in that time due to things falling off the report (e.g. my student loans were still listed on my report when I checked before getting a mortgage in Oct 2010, despite having been paid off in 2005. In Oct 2011 when I checked my report they had fallen off (need to be on for 6 years) and I had an added mortgage debt, yet my credit score was up from ~750 to >820. Adding a mortgage. you would think, would decrease my score, but it didn't - one year of good payment history on it and the drop of my giant (though fully paid off) student loan had a very positive effect. Moral? As long as your score is good, don't get hung up on it because it fluctuates and it's kind of arbitrary. 

4. Nope, never tried it and don't really feel the need to. Seems like they cater to the fear of credit fraud.


----------



## Kim (Jan 10, 2011)

Checking my credit worries me. I get worried about giving my SIN out and more worried that I will be flagged / hounded once the company knows that I am even aware I have credit.

Are there any other ways to make sure your credit is OK? Or can I take the " don't fix it if it isn't broke" option and ignore my credit rating, which I like to think is in good shape anyway.


----------



## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

Who is it you worry will flag you, Kim? I got a credit report from one of the two places mentioned above and it had no effect. Running a credit report is something anyone can and should do. If nothing else you can at least see what it has documented about you. Also makes you want to be careful about who you deal with as records of a lot of stuff stay there forever. For instance, if you ever buy furniture with one of those 'do not pay until 2014' deals, they immediately turn your file over to a collections agency. Even if you pay it off properly, on time and without incident, the credit report still shows you had interaction with them. It was an interesting read for this and other reasons. Knowledge is power.


----------



## Kim (Jan 10, 2011)

Well I thought Equifax might flag me for some reason or other. I guess I don't fully understand my rights when it comes to credit and I am just worried that by asking about it I'll set off the alarms! lol.


----------



## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

You can be flagged for a lot of things, but I don't think that sending a letter to Equifax to request your free credit report is one of them. You have the right to see your credit report. Here's an interesting article on the matter:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/identity-theft/credit-rating.html


----------



## Kim (Jan 10, 2011)

Thanks for the article. 

OK TRM I'll trust your advice and phone in for a free credit report. 
But I am very nervous about doing it.
I think I would rather skydive than do this and I am afraid of planes and heights!!! 

Maybe I am worried it'll say something bad.....fret fret fret.


----------



## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

Thanks for your trust in me. It's pretty painless. It's just a few page report they send in the mail, then you have it. Easy.

I don't think you can/should phone though. Send a letter. Otherwise you have to pay.


----------



## Kim (Jan 10, 2011)

OK it's done.
That was a lot of important info. I was giving out: birthdate, credit card number, SIN. 
They said it was free, it was all automated, and the file should be here in 3-5 business days.


----------



## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

Wow that's fast. Be sure to post here and let us know what you think of the report if you wish. I had some things on my report that sort of caused me to question what was going on. It was a real eye opener. 

For instance, why does a credit card that I've had (but never used) for a long time keep checking my credit? On the report it indicated that they had been checking my credit very frequently. Yet I never signed up for anything and they've sent me no promotional offers. Weird.

Good luck.


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

I mail both bureaus annually.

I wouldn't pay for the score, because I don't really care. To be fair my credit history is excellent, so I don't imagine it's too bad anyway. I'm just looking for errors and fraud.

If you don't want to give out your SIN, don't. They even list it as optional on their form.
You can get your credit report without it. I haven't given them mine.


----------



## londoncalling (Sep 17, 2011)

the-royal-mail said:


> Also makes you want to be careful about who you deal with as records of a lot of stuff stay there forever. For instance, if you ever buy furniture with one of those 'do not pay until 2014' deals, they immediately turn your file over to a collections agency. Even if you pay it off properly, on time and without incident, the credit report still shows you had interaction with them. It was an interesting read for this and other reasons. Knowledge is power.


This is news to me TRM... Do you have some more info on this part about buy now pay later automatically turning your file to collections? I am quite curious as I had planned on making a major purchase this week that had no payments for 6 months... I can afford to start paying right now but figured why not wait the 6 months as there is no interest and no payment required.. I will have to ask the vendor about this at time of purchase and get it in writing from them... It would be even better if you had a source for me to throw in their face at pos... thanks TRM


----------



## freshjiive (Jul 26, 2011)

My suggestion, order your 2 free credit reports annually but stagger them 6 months apart. Generally they do have the same information but I've found equifax has more accurate info. I had to send in for an investigation last year with TU and they were pretty quick to fix an error that was on my credit report. I stare at credit reports daily so if you have a question feel free to ask


----------



## MrMatt (Dec 21, 2011)

the-royal-mail said:


> ... For instance, if you ever buy furniture with one of those 'do not pay until 2014' deals, they immediately turn your file over to a collections agency. Even if you pay it off properly, on time and without incident, the credit report still shows you had interaction with them. It was an interesting read for this and other reasons. Knowledge is power.


Do you mean they sell the debt to a lender, this is not too uncommon, and permitted by most credit agreements.
As long as they leave it in I1, I don't see the problem.
Now if they report it as I9, or some other rating, which I would argue is an error.

I'm not aware of your credit rating getting damanged by WHO lends you money.


----------



## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

Just to clarify, I didn't mean to suggest anyone's rating would be _damaged_ by having a collections agency on your report. It's just that when I got my report I was a bit shocked initially that the name of a collections agency had shown up on there. I had to do some digging to figure out why that was and I later determined it was because I had bought some furniture back in '99 and that remained on my record even though the debt was properly cleared. So if you ask any of these vendors upfront, they'll tell you pretty much everything gets turned over to these agencies. It's probably cheaper for them to have those guys chase the money rather than for retail stores to have to pay staff to try and collect bills. So anytime I see/hear a TV commercial 'DO NOT PAY UNTIL 2018!!!' it's almost certainly a product offered by collections agencies rather than the store itself.

I would prefer not dealing with collections agencies for any reason. But that's just me. Your opinions may vary.


----------



## aldur1 (Aug 17, 2011)

Thank you everyone for sharing your experience on this topic!


----------



## Jungle (Feb 17, 2010)

the-royal-mail said:


> it was because I had bought some furniture back in '99 and that remained on my record even though the debt was properly cleared.


Ummm that should not be on your report as collections then.. if you made your payments on time and paid off the debt. If you did default, then that's a different story. But the way you wrote it, makes it sound like you did nothing wrong and they sent it to collections.. that is a mistake on your credit report.


----------



## Kim (Jan 10, 2011)

*It's here!*

That didn't take long - my credit report arrived on Wednesday.

The personal information that it had for me was almost all correct. It had one mistake stating that I was still employed ( which is fine by me ).

I have had 5 credit checks in the last 7 years MBNA card, TD VISA ( which I gave up for MBNA ), Sears card ( which I have since closed ), and a couple checks from my current bank when we switched our personal and business accounts.

My report gave me R1's for all - which is good. It was a very short report.

And I have to admit TRM it wasn't that hard or as scary as I thought : )

Thanks!


----------



## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

Thanks Kim for the update - I am glad to hear you followed through with this and are pleased with what you've seen on your report. I think this is a worthwhile thing to do.

Jungle, you are 100 right. I don't think that shows up on my report as bad debt or anything. I've never defaulted for anything. It's just that I don't care for the NAME of a collections agency (it was called something like Financial Collections Svcs or some da-n thing) showing up on my credit report. It went to a collections agency to collect the debt, but it's splitting hairs to suggest it wasn't send "to collections" in the minds of some. As I say, I'm not going to sign up for any more of these plans as I don't want the names of any more collections agencies showing up on my credit report.


----------



## Guigz (Oct 28, 2010)

Maybe this is not a good time to mention this, but there was a CSI episode, a while ago, where one of the criminals was operating a credit check agency but, in reality, he was stealing and selling the personal information of people. 

That is, they signed up for a credit check plan and then their identities got stolen...

Any chances this could happen in real life? Can anybody start a "credit checking/monitoring" business or does one need some type of accreditation?


----------



## Zoombie (Jan 10, 2012)

Guigz said:


> Maybe this is not a good time to mention this, but there was a CSI episode, a while ago, where one of the criminals was operating a credit check agency but, in reality, he was stealing and selling the personal information of people.
> 
> That is, they signed up for a credit check plan and then their identities got stolen...
> 
> Any chances this could happen in real life? Can anybody start a "credit checking/monitoring" business or does one need some type of accreditation?


I don't think this could happen in Canada, and I work for a company protecting people from identity theft. However, just to be sure, if you send me your Name, SIN and Address I can run your info through our SecuriTech Database to make sure your identity is safe. ...


----------

