Thinking about a credit freeze?

Unless you have had a problem with your personal identity information being stolen I would not place a credit freeze on your credit file. Banks, credit unions, utility companies, rental agencies, credit card companies and many others use one of the three large credit reporting agencies to check on you before they will open an account for you.

We thought a credit freeze would be a great protection so we paid the fee for all the family members to the three credit agencies: TransUnion, Experian and Equifax. It was easy enough to get the freeze in place but it was very hard to get it removed. I have all kinds of personal conspiracy theories about why it was so hard to get it removed, but the point is that it was very hard to remove them.

Whatever you do, if you place a freeze on your credit keep the pin number some place safe! Believe me you will need it again.

It took us eight months to get all the three companies to remove the credit freeze’s. We wrote letters, filled forms, made complaints, sent FAX’s and made phone calls to 800 numbers that had no live person to talk to.

TransUnion took the longest to get removed, until I got the phone number where you can get a real live person. Armed with the phone number and my other information it was then easy to remove it. But the phone numbers are not published.

In California, the freeze removal is free. I’m not sure about other states.

I finally made progress when a credit union representative where I was trying to open an account told me to phone 1-800-916-8800 for TransUnion. This number is for consumer relations and is likely a good back up number, but is still not the right number. I spoke to a live operator and he gave me a number for a live person in the Fraud and Victims department. That number is 1-800-680-7289.

Once I got through to a live person it took about 15 minutes and the nightmare was over.

If you have experienced something similar and have the phone numbers for Experian and Equifax or if you work for either of these companies and know a phone number where you can get a live person, please let me know and I will add it here.

(This information sponsored by Yen 9 Affordable Web Hosting as a public service.)