Late last month I wrote that my credit monitoring service alerted me that Equifax made a mistake on my credit report. When I followed-up with Equifax via the phone, they would not tell me who provided the incorrect information. It was a minor, non-financial mistake, but a mistake none-the-less.
Then I received an additional inquiry form from Equifax in the (snail) mail. This would help pin point the error for them. Lo and behold, my information on the printed Equifax form was accurate!
This leaves the following scenarios:
- Equifax has my information correct in certain database but not others
- My credit monitoring company made the mistake themselves
- It was a different company that made the mistake (perhaps Experian or TransUnion)
- It was an information provider to Equifax
- It was an information provider to my credit monitoring service
- It was an information provider to a different company (perhaps Experian or TransUnion)
As an FYI, my credit is monitored by a major monitoring service, not a dinky one. It was they who referred me to Equifax in the first place. And think, they could also be the one’s to blame!
The question is still open:
Who generated the incorrect information? Where did it originate?
I filled out the Equifax form and sent an letter with the corresponding authentication information. We’ll see how they reply. Until then…
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2 Comments
So what does this tell us about relying on such services, say, as part of hiring, or heck, even as part of credit-granting processes by a financial institution?
It’s a very good and difficult question without a satisfactory answer due to processing variations between systems as well as how data is entered and spread within and outside of an organization.
Naturally, the amount of trust we put into data should vary according to the amount of trust we put in the source, similar to how we judge people. It seems to me that often times internal corporate data is mostly reliable. There are errors and they get fixed when found.
My issue here is the transparency of process: we cannot determine the data flow and correct the issue at the source. In fact we do not even know where it is.
This is normal to an extent: when we call for customer service, we do not interface with the internal corporate workers, only the service representatives in the call center.
My issue is that I cannot discover who has data — and incorrect data — about me.