Check Your Credit

Q: Got any loans? How's your credit rating? It was one of those things that one intends to, but never get around to actually doing, right?. The credit recording companies/agencies are required to provide you with your credit record information, free, by law. So, after nearly 50 years working and living in Canada I checked mine, for free, for the first time. The procedure requires you to make a request proving your identity and the information is mailed to you within a few weeks. You have to be careful requesting because some 'Free' offer information is packaged with some additional information from Equifax and others that they WILL charge you for! Fortunately my record was clean, very clean. But there were a few minor errors. The two significant ones were; !) My 'current' mailing address, which was merely a change of a PO Box number, caused by Canada Post installing additional boxes, some three to four years ago was shown as my 'Previous Address'. I corrected it. BTW some organisations, including on occasion the government, have difficulty with the concept that your street or civic address (where you actually live!) may not be the same as one's mailing address! And may mix up the info, use the wrong postal code etc. I don't know why? Maybe some think that everyone has mail delivery to one's door? 2) One very ordinary bank account that has never been in Overdraft for the last ten/twenty years or longer was shown as "Too new/recent to be rated". Oddly I have had this account with the same bank since August 1956! I questioned the statement and was referred to 'my' bank. But I could never get through to a live person at that bank, at a convenient time, to ask about it. What the heck! It doesn't affect the rating anyway; but just demonstrates what can be misquoted? Something else I learned was that every time someone else (not if you) makes a check on your credit rating it can affect how it's rated! In other words; say you are carefully 'shopping around' for a better mortgage, student loan or the best line of credit or personal loan interest rate etc. The several enquiries that various financial institutions may make may actually lower your credit rating! So if/when you are sitting across from your 'friendly' financial officer at 'your' bank and they check your credit rating on the computer screen you can't quite see from where you are sitting, it may be adding a demerit point or two. Merely by asking? This is hard to understand because presumably shopping around to borrow money at the most advantageous interest rate and terms is, like any contemplated purchase, demonstrating that one is a prudent consumer? Aha! But they want to lend you money at the highest rate possible? So there is a procedure for inputting corrections. I.e. you can challenge the information that the credit recording agencies have about your financial dealings. Many years ago I was hired for a job involving much travelling and entertaining and applied for an American Express (which was the favoured one at the time) Credit Card. Was refused because I had at that time no debt or history of debt and therefore no credit rating! Different these days; not a month goes by that somebody, including AMEX isn't trying to open a card account with incentives to lend me something! This even includes banks I already deal with. To whom I would say, "Why are you trying to 'sell' me another credit card? Don't you see my monthly payment of the card balance of the card you already sold me?". The 'come on' from some institutions, trying to lend you money, are almost like a piece of chewing gum stuck to your shoe that you think you got rid of! You scrape it off the shoe and it sticks to your pants, fingers etc. Viz. A couple of months later I get spam email or postal mailing for the same thing from the same financial institutions! Have fun out there in financial world,

A: As a point of interest, you can only purchase your credit score from Equifax Canada and TransUnion Canada. They don't give it away because they are not legislated to do so. They are legislated to give you your credit report for FREE. Equifax's credit score is actually the FICO score and is generated from a U.S. company called Fair Isaac Corporation. TransUnion uses their own proprietary credit score called TransRisk Score. They just started charging for it on their website. My problem is that the credit score is so important to getting most credit. Many lenders look at only the credit score. As the previous post said, he was getting penalized for items that were incorrect on his credit report. We're trying to create awareness that this happens all the time with Equifax and TransUnion. .

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