Given how critical credit has become in our everyday lives, it has become more important than ever to know what is in our credit file. This affects our credit reports, credit scores, and ultimately, access to credit.
Checking Bad Information.
Too often, the information found in a credit file is inaccurate, outdated, or unverified. This bad information is used against us in credit decisions, insurance, housing, and even employment. These are real reasons to make sure the information creditors, insurers, and potential employers see is accurate and up-to-date.
This priority of maintaining a current credit file has attraced credit reporting comapnies to offer credit monitoring services. These services do more than just give you a credit report. They are services that let you pull many credit reports during the year without any penalties for the inquiries. They monitor any changes to your credit file and send you alerts when new items appear.
The major credit monitoring services are provided by the 3 credit reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. There are also very popular services offered by Credit.com, FreeCreditReport.com, and many others.
Beware of the Auto-Bill.
Too often, you hear the complaint that a credit monitoring service is billing whether the customer wants the service or not. It is ironic that one of the reasons you want the service is to find and remove erroneous debt items on your report. Yet, the credit monitoring service you hire is the very cause of this problem.
One common solution to this is to use a debit card rather than a credit card when you purchase a service. If a service continues to bill after you’ve finished with the service, you can always cancel the debit card. Canceling a credit card can have a negative impact on your credit file, so using a debit card saves you this headache.
Credit.com’s Identity Guard.
Credit.com is not a credit reporting agency (CRA). However, it does offer credit scoring services and identity theft protection. Identity Guard is one of their services. Remember, just because a company is not a CRA, does not mean it can’t offer competitive services.
Identity Guard seems to be the standard for credit reporting services. Their report is very close to what the actual CRA’s report.
Equifax Score Power
The advantage of Score Power is that it is offered by Equifax. Since Equifax is a credit reporting agency, they have direct access to one of the three major credit scores you want to monitor.
The Score Power number is the Beacon score. This is Equifax’s version of the FICO score.
Score Power is one of the few monitoring services that notifies you of deletions. Well, it does it in a round-about way. Equifax Score Power notifies you when your score goes up or down. A notification stating your score went up, may or may not be due to the deletion though.
MyFICO
When you want to check your credit scores (not reports), MyFICO offers a comprehensive service for you. Their business is providing you with the credit scores you need to track your progress as you clean up your credit files, remove incorrect information, and delete negative items.
Take Advantage Of The Grace Period.
Almost all the credit monitoring and score providers offer a free-trial period. Take full advantage of that. Use it as an opportunity to determine what each service provides and whether it is giving you the information you want.
The basic cost to get started with these services is less than $20. So, you are not taking a big financial risk by trying them. Besides, if you use a debit card (credit cards are too easy to auto-bill), you give yourself a chance to get out of a service you no longer want.
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