Stop Creditors from Being Alerted

[SoFaithful]

If I pull my credit reports and the credit bureaus update my personal info, will this activity alert my creditors? If so, is there a way to stop my creditors from being alerted?

[Ravenous Wolf]

I think you have a misunderstanding of what the CRAs are.

First, they are a FOR-PROFIT business. That is, they “sell” things to make money. Like, they primarily sell credit reports (and they try to hawk additional products) to their creditors. When someone pays cold hard cash to a CRA, they get a credit report. Pay extra, and they get “enhanced” credit reports.

The CRAs do not operate as a 24 hour hotline to their creditors.

The CRAs “make” money by making the creditors “look” at your credit report.

A CRA doesn’t give a rat’s [EXPLETIVE DELETED] if you change your personal information. They aren’t going to tell anybody about it unless somebody pays them cold hard cash for it.

Nobody is going to get “alerted” by changes. They have to pay for them. They don’t get them for free.

Often times, creditors will do an “account review” to see how your credit rating is doing but they are more interested in how you are doing with your score than how you are doing with your personal information.

And if you don’t mind me asking, why the James Bond act with your personal information???

[SoFaithful]

And if you don’t mind me asking, why the James Bond act with your personal information???

Thanks for the reply. I have some outstanding debts from a few years ago and I would like to start the repair process. However, I would simply like to avoid a barage of mail and threats from these old creditors. I would like to have an opportunity to prioritize and do the repair in an orderly and logical fashion.

I should have clarified 'old' creditors, not current creditors, in my first post. If I'm off the mark just let me know. I'm just pretty new at this. I'm here to learn.

[Ravenous Wolf]

The reason I asked about keeping your address secret is because I keep mine private with my private mailbox.

For the past five years, I have used a private mailbox for ALL of my mail.

And I feel that it works great. That mailing address is for all of my creditors, bills, and even for the CRAs.

I have never received a single letter at my current residential address or at any of my previous addresses. I feel that there are plenty of advantages to it. First, I moved around a lot from apartment to apartment every year and it was a big hassle to keep everyone informed to where I lived at.

But more importantly, creditors have it in their lending policy that the length of a residential address is very important. That has a big impact on credit lending decisions. A common misperception is that it basically your score that determines if you get approved or not. That is not necessarily true. A score is a big part but creditors also factor in lots of other criteria in their decision making process which is I opted for the private mailbox.

And finally, I didn’t want to announce to entire world my residential address.

Yeah, someone could eventually find it if they went to the county courthouse or looked up a few databases but that is work. If you add effort to something, that places a big obstacle for people who don’t like to do work.

You might want to look into getting a private mailbox.

It has worked great for me and for a number of other people.

The only drawback are your previous addresses. Collectors will continue to use the old addresses until doomsday to make you pay for something. A collector for Chase STILL sends letters to my parent’s address even though that account was charged off over 12 years ago.

There really is no way around that if a collector wants to continue to collect on you. That is, if they continue selling the account to other collectors.

And there are plenty of other ways for a collector to find you. One time, a collector called up EVERY person of my last name in the city I lived in. I was unlisted. He eventually found my brother who spilled the beans on me.

So even hiding your address may not offer complete protection.

[SoFaithful]

Wow, thanks for that reply Ravenous Wolf! I'm glad you don't think I'm being paranoid.

Like you, I have moved around a lot and I expect to move a few more times in the near future.

When you say 'private mailbox' you mean something like Mailboxes, Etc as opposed to a P. O. Box, right?

[Ravenous Wolf]

There are plenty more advantages of a private mailbox over a PO Box.

First, a lot of places are simply paranoid about PO boxes. And you lose so much convenience because PO boxes do not accept FEDEX, UPS, etc.

A private mailbox place can sign for you, etc.

As for Mailboxes ETC/The UPS Store, my personal preference is an independent place instead of a big retail outfit. That is just my personal preference.

The post office have devoted a lot of time trying to run private mail places out of business so they have made this one restriction. You can only use the pound sign, # for your box number.

You cannot put Suite # or Apt # on it.

However, I have not had a letter rejected because it has Apt # on it and the operators of private mail places say that there really isn’t a problem with that because mail still gets delivered.

The only disadvantage is this.

If a creditor chooses to purchase additional products from a CRA, like HAWK from TU or other enhanced products, they will determine that the private mailbox is not a residential address.

HAWK and others have a much better refined database that can identify if that is really a residential address while the basic consumer credit reports don’t go into that detail.

Only very few outfits pay the extra money for those products. And I have only had one bank come right out and tell me that they want my real address. Just about everyone else accepted that this was my true address.

I did have to spend a little extra time cleaning that up with Experian.

[Devil's Advocate]

Watchdog service- A service creditors or CA's use (offered by the three major CBs) that report any new info to them when you apply for new credit. Keep that in mind when adding a new phone # or address on an application, or even update with current creditors.

[willingtocope]

Does "opting out" put a stop to this?

[Ravenous Wolf]

Watchdog service- A service creditors or CA's use (offered by the three major CBs) that report any new info to them when you apply for new credit. Keep that in mind when adding a new phone # or address on an application' date=' or even update with current creditors.[/quote']

That is why it is important to keep the personal data as accurate and as consistent as possible.

I have been consistent with my private mailbox for five years and pounced whenever any slight changes are made.

And slight changes happen all the time because the CRAs suck up info from EVERY application of credit and replace your personal data with it. So changes can happen all the time if you make lots of inquiries every year. And the places that do the inquiries can make LOTS of typos...

HAWK is the service for Trans Union.

A few creditors subscribe to HAWK and HAWK has triggered a few alerts on me.