All posts by Maxine Sweet
When a criminal steals your account number and security code, they often are planning to use that account to make purchases. Your credit report is not consulted for purchase transactions.
So, in such cases, you should consider contacting your card issuer and request a new account number. At minimum, you should check your account online to see if there has been any activity which you do not recognize.
If the criminal’s goal is to open new accounts in your name, then it is likely that one of your three credit reports would be accessed by the potential lender. In that case, you may want to consider adding an alert to your reports.
Fraud alerts are special statements consumers can have added to their credit report if they have reason to believe they may be a fraud victim or know that they have been victimized.
In our busy lives, it is easy to miss paying a bill.
However, your lenders won’t accept excuses for why they you didn’t pay them as you agreed to do. For example, your bankcard company cannot make excuses for being late in paying the merchants where you made your purchases. When you don’t pay, they still have to pay on your behalf.
Missed payments can have a severe impact on your credit scores. And lower credit scores will often penalize you with higher interest rates - which can end up costing you tens-of-thousands of dollars throughout your life.
So here are five strategies to help you build the best credit scores . . .
Unfortunately, many people have received poor credit advice and been taken advantage from credit repair companies. Many people don't realize that there isn't anything that a credit repair service is able to legally do for you that you can't do yourself for little or no expense.