I went through this with Anthem, I froze my wife’s and my credit on all three bureaus, and they didn’t charge me for freezing it. I didn’t file a police report, either. Maybe they’ll charge to unfreeze it? I didn’t see anything in what I got from the agencies that indicated I would need to pay a fee, I definitely didn’t when I froze them. I think it may have to do with what state you come from, some it may be free.
I still would recommend freezing your credit rating on the three services, it probably is the safest way to protect yourself. Unless you apply for loans or other things that require credit checks routinely, it probably isn’t that big a deal, you can unfreeze it online, and from what I can tell it is pretty quick. When you apply for a loan, tell them you need to unfreeze the account and find out which of the services they use, and unfreeze it for that particular company.
They are different, and I didn’t know that. Here’s more about the retina: “Retinal Scanning requires a very close encounter with a scanning device that sends a beam of light deep inside the eye to capture an image of the Retina. Since the Retina is located on the back of the eye, retinal scanning was not widely accepted due to the intrusive process required to capture an image.”
When I visit my eye surgeon for periodic checkups on the laser surgery repairs to retinal tears, it is a major dialysis project to let him look all the way to the back of the eye. I question the utility of retinal images for daily use.but I may be a troglodyte on this one.
Still struggling with this… Got on a call with TransUnion credit bureau today with D, and they refused to allow a 3 way call with me, my D, and them. But 3 weeks ago, a different TU guy did it. I had her on the line today, the 3 of us at once. Grrr. Will have to call back and try someone else.
@intparent - Escalate. “I want to escalate this to your supervisor” are the words you want to say if the rep you’re speaking to isn’t helping. And document, document, document…I recently was able to get TransUnion to fix an error on my credit report but I had to move up the chain of command twice in order to get it done. Keep going, you can do this…
I actually got what I needed before he figured out it was a 3 way call. Then he wanted to look stuff up, but I don’t think we needed him to.
But then went on to try to speak to a person at Experian and Equifax, and it was literally impossible. Trapped in the phone tree, and no choices or saying “agent” or “operator” or “representative” or hitting zero or pound or star would get you to one. D was pretty entertained when one of them hung up on us after saying “you have made too many errors” after I tried multiple words to get a person. I want to confirm that no additional credit requests came to them between pulling the 1st credit report and getting the hold on 4-5 calendar days later. I guess the only way to do that is to pull another credit report and check it (which we almost requested by accident in the phone tree once anyway). Experian has notified us that we get 2 free, but haven’t heard from Equifax yet. And don’t really want to use one of the two to check this 4-5 day window.
And still no letter from the fraud dept at the bank after 3 weeks, so we had to call them. Bank guy kept transposing her SSN digits and not finding her record when we called today – took four tries.
Well, that’s why the dentist office wants you to provide your SSN, but I refuse to do it. They can refuse to grant me credit and make me pay in full at the time of the appointment, but they never do. The biggest source of the tax refund rings in Florida is buying the names and SSN from employees at dentist offices, filing for the tax refunds fraudulently.
I never give my kids’ SSN. Not to their high school, not to the dentist, not to the hockey team which continued to ask for it, year after year (using forms from the 1980s, when the players could travel to Canada on just a SSN).
Sorry if this was covered already but Credit karma is useful for monitoring your credit on the fly. They send text or emails out the instant your credit report changes. It works pretty well.
Got on a call with TransUnion credit bureau today with D, and they refused to allow a 3 way call with me, my D, and them. But 3 weeks ago, a different TU guy did it. I had her on the line today, the 3 of us at once. Grrr. Will have to call back and try someone else.