Letters From North
America by Peary Perry
One
of the most frightening
statements any of us
could ever hear is this:
“Hi, I’m from the
government and I’m here
to help.”
Be afraid….be truly
afraid….in fact run if
you can.
Let’s look an example of
how we are being
‘helped’ by the good old
US government.
Suppose you want to buy
something and they run a
credit check on you. You
get turned down. The
results show some kind
of an error which you
don’t understand. These
can be fairly simple;
sometimes they have you
confused with another
person, perhaps the
store made a mistake,
maybe the account was
entered twice or you
could be the victim of
identity theft.
In any event you decide
to check it out for
yourself, since the
company doesn’t give you
the exact nature of the
reason you were turned
down. You log onto
annualcreditreport.com
and then try to navigate
you way through all of
their on line
instructions to obtain
your annual free
report….The first agency
(TransUnion) doesn’t
allow me to see my
report due to the fact
that at one time or
another I had a credit
alert reporting account
with them that has since
expired…so they have me
blocked. The other two
agencies are fairly
straight forward and I
print out all of the
information without any
hassle. Now it’s up to
me to sort through
everything and make some
sense of it.
This is the hard part. I
find a number of
duplicate accounts that
should not be included.
No one (at least no one
I know of) has three
Sears accounts. I also
find that some of the
accounts have reported
me in the good guy, no
problem section along
with another reporting
of me in the “He was
late one month back in
2002” bad guy
section…for this same
account. How can I be
both? It appears this
information stays with
me forever or until I
die, perhaps even after
that. With my luck the
funeral home won’t take
me as a customer due to
some error on my credit
score. I suppose you
have to have a decent
average and be in good
standing with the credit
bureaus before you can
get a funeral. I don’t
know this to be a fact,
but would not be
surprised. Not that it
will bother me, but I’d
like to think of my wife
and kids not having to
explain why I was late
paying for some unwanted
magazines in the years
past. So, as I am
writing this, I am also
printing out the two
reports I was able to
access on line. I will
get started working on
the resolution of these
issues before I depart
the earth since I tend
to believe things of
this nature might
produce unwarranted
stress in times of
grief. I might be wrong,
but that’s what I
believe.
I finally get the
reports printed out. One
is 17 pages and the
other is 36. Why anyone
needs to know about
accounts that I closed
years ago is beyond me,
but there they are. So,
what good does this do
for me or anyone else?
When I checked the
internet to find out if
anyone was having
problems such as this, I
found that my ability to
print the reports at all
was somewhat of a
miracle. It seems lots
of folks are having a
very difficult time even
getting this far. Then
here comes the best
part.
The agency in charge of
investigating the credit
bureaus for mistakes or
delays is the Federal
Trade Commission (
www.ftc.gov or
1-877-382-4357) but they
can’t really help you
since they can’t tell
you if they are
investigating any
complaints about any of
the agencies. A
spokesperson stated that
‘all FTC investigations
are non-public” so there
you go. This means they
can’t advise you if they
are checking for issues
with any of the three
major agencies. And,
they can’t tell you if
they are trying to
resolve any of these
issues as well.
They do recommend that
you log onto their web
site and file a
complaint if you aren’t
happy with your
experience with either
getting your free report
or correcting any errors
in your report. Having
said that, then they
tell you they aren’t
able to tell you what
will happen to your
complaint since it’s
‘confidential’.
So, if you complain, but
you can’t check on your
complaint, then how do
you know anyone is doing
anything about your
complaint or that they
ever will? Especially
when you go for months
and see no action or get
the results you are
looking for? Sound like
the old runaround to me,
doesn’t it to you? How
much money is spent on
this dismal effort?
Our government in
action….ain’t it great?
