ID Theft
Credit monitoring?
A year ago, I somehow enrolled some credit monitoring program from a big nationwide bank. Today I found that there was an account I didn't know its existence. According to the policy, I am supposed to get notifications for delinquent payments and activities thru first class mail. But I don't think I've got one. What would be the best way to handle this? I was trying to call but it is closed until Monday.
Public Comments
- Most credit reports include a contact sheet at the bottom, for contacting the companies in your credit report, listing a lot of times an address and phone number. Look there and try to contact the company when you can, Monday or whenever. Most bigger credit card companies are 24/7, you could try calling the company that the mystery acct, or you can try to call the company that is monitoring your credit for you, they should have the step-by-step procedures for you. I work at Discover card, and 85% of the sub-departments are 24/7, our credit monitoring service is open 24/7 and has credit specialists available for this very reason. Along the lines of why didn't you get notification, there are several different ways the company can notify you, e-mail, text messages, phone, or mail. It's possible when you "somehow enrolled" you gave them one of these pieces of info, that is now out of date, and they tried to e-mail you, etc. but the info has since changed. If the acct shows delinquencies you need to handle this ASAP, other credit card companies could see that and raise you rate on the accts you know about and use on a regular basis. I know that sounds like something that should be illegal, but read your card-member agreement, it's in there for every credit card company that I know of that if you're late elsewhere, your rate is hiked.
