Found Not Lost

Experian, one of the major credit reporting agencies, has sued life lock claiming that it is fraudulent for a third party to place fraud alerts on behalf of a consumer. Experian claims that consumers can place fraud protection on their accounts without having to pay a third party for the service. What they don’t tell you is, that they make it very hard for consumers to accomplish that. Have you ever tried contacting any of the credit reporting agencies to fix inconsistencies in your credit report or even to simply ask a question? Exactly. You’d be lucky if you speak to a real person at all, and to file anything with them, it has to be in writing and must be sent via certified mail. It may even have to be notarized, but I’m just guessing on that.

The thing is with Lifelock, you can place a constant watcher over your credit. They will put a fraud alert on your credit account and will renew that alert every 90 days. The alert means that you will get notified everytime there is an activity involving your credit. When someone tries to acquire loan or credit cards, when someone inquires about your credit, or any kind of transaction requiring access to your credit history, you will get an alert of the activity. The credit reporting agencies don’t like this because, as you can see, it will create more work for them. They claim this will increase their cost for doing business. Of course, I can see that. The thing is, they also provide the same service as Lifelock and also for a fee. Of course they are not going to complain about the overhead cost their service causes them. It sounds more to me like ‘it’s ok if we do it, just so no one else does it’. What do you think?