CLAMP Campus Adventures

I’ve gotten a couple of dings on my credit report over the past week. A ding is when you do something that can effect your credit, usually negatively. For me, it was applying for car loans with Carl. These are legitimate dings and shouldn’t have a huge effect on my score, but something happened that ticked me off.

As I stated in today’s Money Stuffed article, I ultimately applied for two loans. One from Capital One and another through the auto dealership we used. The dealership’s loan is actually through a Eastern Bank. This should mean I have two dings on my report, correct?

Coincidentally, in January I did one of my two annual credit report pulls from Experian. I can pull twice a year as a Massachusetts resident, but messed up in September and pulled all three at once, so I’m limited to one per agency until September. In May, I’ll pull Transunion’s report. Experian had several errors on my report. I can dispute most of them online, but I had to write a letter about my name being wrong and indicating my correct current employer (they still listed IBM). This got me another report. Since reports can be accessed online for 90 days, I can access this particular report until late May. I’ve been checking it for new information sporadically, as it doesn’t really change often. After Liz’s article on creditors failing to report your actual limit and only reporting your high balance, I challenged a couple more. One of those disputes was resolved yesterday and I received an email to go check today, prompting me to take another peek at my report.

What I saw disturbed me. Instead of the two expected dings, I saw three.

The Capital One ding was expected. I also expected one ding for the dealer auto loan. Here’s how that looks in detail:

Here’s what Eastern Bank pulled:

A real estate loan? Fine. If they want to pull my credit to offer me a refinanced mortgage, they should do so where it’s not visible to others pulling my report. I did not authorize them to pull my report for a real estate refinance, new mortgage, or home equity loan or even a home equity line of credit!

Experian states (bold mine):

According to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, credit grantors with a permissible purpose may review your credit information. When a request for your credit history is made, a record of who made the request and the reason they reviewed your credit will display on your credit report for two years.

As far as I’m concerned, Eastern Bank did not have a permissible purpose to pull my credit for a real estate loan. At best this is incorrect information and not for a real estate loan, but a double-ding on my auto loan since it’s two dings for one loan, at worst Eastern Bank is using my information fraudulently. I have already written a letter of challenge and will be sending it out today. It looks like I’ll get another reporting number from Experian and an additional 90-day look at my report. It doesn’t make this at all right and it angers me.