A bit of a personal story about credit. I was informed by American Express today that my credit card balance had been decreased by a large sum. I was “confused”. Thereafter, the representative on the phone felt the full wrath of my “confusion”. I knew for a fact that I had never been late with any of my payments and that my debt/income ratio was fine. After speaking with another representative, I decided to pull my credit reports and scores from the three bureau’s. To my astonishment, I found 2 delinquencies from an overdraft line of credit from a previous bank whose name rhymes with “Schmitibank”. Long story shot, “Schmitibank” had assured me that my accounts were closed almost a year ago. I was, however, still an active client (when I had been told my account was closed by several reps) who was being charged, without my knowledge, for account maintenance fees. Furthermore, the statements from Schmitibank were being sent back to the bank as “return to sender” for reasons unknown. I had to spend almost an hour at the physical branch of Schmitibank (manager was incredibly courteous), to have them actually contact the 3 credit bureau’s for me.
The lesson here is simple: When it comes your credit, get everything in writing and dispute the charges immediately. Having written evidence will buttress your claims with the credit beareaus and hopefully get you back to your old credit score in a much quicker fashion.
