Credit Report

Elizabeth J. Gammie is not dead. I haven't known her long, but I'm going to vouch for her. Standing before me on a recent afternoon, her cheeks looked rosy and her hand felt warm and soft when we shook. The almost 81-year-old Parkville resident was heading out to play a mean game of cards with friends. Just to make sure it wasn't a body double, I inspected her passport and Maryland driver's license to make sure she really is who she says she is. Short of a DNA test, I was convinced. But I digress.

WHEN YOU APPLY for a job, you expect the company to check your references. But do you also expect it to pull your credit report?Tens of thousands of employers take a peek at this slice of your personal life: Do you have big debts, do you pay bills on time, have you ever been sued by a creditor, is there a tax lien on your home or a bankruptcy in your past?Employers use these reports "to serve as a general indicator of an applicant's financial honesty and personal integrity," says Experian (formerly TRW)

On the prowl: Many corporate executives are looking for new positions because they're dissatisfied with their jobs, finds a survey by executive recruiter Paul Ray Berndtson and Cornell University. The survey of nearly 1,900 executives found nearly 30 percent plan to leave their jobs as soon as they find something else. Many survey respondents cited job insecurity or heavy workloads.Getting credit: It's hard enough for entrepreneurs and small-business owners to get credit, and really tough if they've got a bad credit rating.

MEMO TO THE thousands of people who've struggled to fix an error on their credit reports: A new set of amendments to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) will take effect 11 months from now. They'll expand your rights and make it easier to enforce the rules.The credit bureaus have already put many of these reforms into force. Some were adopted on a voluntary basis. Others were instituted at gunpoint, after the states or the Federal Trade Commission accused the bureaus of violating the law."

Q: I am unemployed and have no income of my own. My husband and I were issued VISA cards in each of our own names. All our assets, including our home as well as our savings and checking accounts, are owned jointly. If something were to happen to my husband, would I have a credit history?A: Income and assets have very little to do with a credit history. A credit card, a car loan or a mortgage should show up on your credit history, whereas a checking or savings account and even stocks and bonds probably will not.In order for a joint credit source to appear on a wife's credit history, her name should appear on the loan or credit-card application.

Q: Could you please tell me how to clear up my credit? I have a copy of my Trans Union credit report, and some of the bad stuff on there has been paid off. I keep sending them letters but they still haven't taken it off. What should I do?A: I'd like to be able to help you, but there's nothing that I, or anyone else, can do. You see, a credit report is really a credit VTC history that must include all credit experiences over the past seven years. Bankruptcies stay on your credit history for 10 years.

Finally, reading a credit report doesn't require a degree in hieroglyphics.TRW Credit Services, one of the major credit-reporting firms, has produced a document that eliminates the numbers and codes that have confused many consumers."

Last year TRW, the giant credit reporting company, bowed to public and court pressure.Today it's showtime. Starting now, if you want a copy of your TRW credit report you're entitled to get one free. If you want more than one copy within a year, TRW has reduced the fee to $7.50 from $15 per report. And if you've been denied credit, you're also entitled to a free report to help understand why.All this is in response to government complaints and suits filed by the FTC, Michigan and 18 other states over accuracy.

Consumers in Maryland would have the right to a free annual report of their credit ratings and a free copy of a statement of rights under a bill passed by the General Assembly.The bill is believed to be the first in the country to require free reports from the companies that collect and sell data on the financial health of virtually every adult in the United States.Gov. William Donald Schaefer is expected to sign the bill this month, though a spokesman for his press office declined to comment.

As anyone who has ever been turned down for a credit card, car loan or mortgage because of a faulty credit report can attest, getting such errors corrected is often a tedious, frustrating experience. Even relatively minor mistakes can result in major delays and inconvenience; at worst, people's lives and reputations have been ruined because credit bureaus have passed on inaccurate or incomplete information about their credit histories.The problem affects millions of consumers. A 1991 study by the Consumers Union found nearly 50 percent of the credit reports contained at least one inaccuracy, and a fifth had an error serious enough to damage the applicant's creditworthiness.

If you're thinking about buying a home or refinancing - even if you've got excellent credit - you may want to avail yourself of a forthcoming free service that could help you get a better mortgage rate. Under the terms of a national class action settlement, you may qualify for six or nine months of daily monitoring of your credit file plus unrestricted access to your credit report and score. To be eligible, you need to have had any form of open credit account - a charge card, student loan, auto loan or a mortgage - at any time between Jan. 1, 1987, and this past May 28. An estimated 160 million American consumers can meet that criterion, though eligibility expires Sept.

You don't give out your Social Security number to strangers. You never click on phishing schemes. You shred all credit card solicitations or papers bearing account information. For all your precautions, it only takes one computer hacker or one stolen laptop for thieves to get your personal information and open credit accounts in your name. You can't control data breaches at businesses and government agencies. But next year you will have more power to limit the damage thieves can inflict.

Elizabeth J. Gammie is not dead. I haven't known her long, but I'm going to vouch for her. Standing before me on a recent afternoon, her cheeks looked rosy and her hand felt warm and soft when we shook. The almost 81-year-old Parkville resident was heading out to play a mean game of cards with friends. Just to make sure it wasn't a body double, I inspected her passport and Maryland driver's license to make sure she really is who she says she is. Short of a DNA test, I was convinced. But I digress.

A lawyer for Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele said yesterday that Steele is considering whether he will sue a former staffer for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and possibly the committee itself if additional questions are not answered this week about the employee's efforts to obtain his credit report. E. Mark Braden, who is representing Steele and worked as counsel to the Republican National Committee during the 1980s, said he wants to know whether Lauren B. Weiner, who is expected to plead guilty to a misdemeanor tomorrow in federal court, shared the information she found with her Democratic colleagues or others.

After news that Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee researchers reviewed Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele's credit report, five GOP senators yesterday asked for assurances from that group's head, Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, that committee staffers hadn't accessed their personal credit information. A spokesman for the group, which helps Democratic senatorial candidates nationwide, said last week that the researchers had not obtained any other credit reports. But the Republican senators, all of whom face re-election next year, wrote that "the security of our families' finances is too important to rely on the assurances of professional political staff and consultants whose primary focus is defeating us next November."

While apartment hunting in Detroit this spring, Laura Tropea pulled her credit report to see how a prospective landlord might view her as a tenant. The 28-year-old civil rights lawyer expected to see some late credit card payments from her undergraduate days at the University of Michigan. But she was amazed to discover on her credit report that she owed about $168 to the Ann Arbor, Mich., public library for books checked out years ago. "I haven't lived in Ann Arbor for five years. ... It's bizarre to me," said Tropea, who maintains that she returned the books and never received an overdue notice.

As Marylanders are already able to do, others across the United States can soon get a free copy of their credit reports -- a year after the government promised to make them available at no charge. The free access is the result of longtime lobbying to reform the credit-reporting system to help consumers better protect themselves against identity theft and give them better methods of ensuring an accurate credit history. Until now, you could get a free report -- a log of your credit history -- only under specific circumstances, such as being denied credit in the past 60 days.

ANYONE who has bought a home or applied for a mortgage knows this hard financial reality: What is in your credit report can cost you thousands of dollars in extra loan charges or can save you thousands. Lenders base their rate quotes to you on your credit score, which is nothing more than your credit file run through an electronic risk-prediction grid. If the information is erroneous, and your scores are depressed, that's your problem. You need to get the bad stuff in your files corrected or deleted before you apply for a mortgage.

A BIOCHEMISTRY graduate student I know - she asked that I just call her Daisy - should have been able to get by on her university stipend. But getting by wasn't quite enough. Daisy found that she could treat her friends to rounds of drinks, and come home for Christmas with suitcases full of presents, by relying on credit cards. She maxed out five credit cards in one year and accumulated $17,000 in debt, with three years of school left. "You lose track," she said. "They give you a huge amount of credit."

One of my children was extremely delinquent in paying several credit cards. These cards are now paid off. A representative of one of the credit bureaus told me that these delinquencies would continue to show on her credit report for the next seven to 10 years, but that for $198 plus $12 shipping and handling, the credit report could be cleared within 30 days. A refund of the money she pays is guaranteed within that time period. Is this a valid offer or a scam? Of course it's a scam. Just think about the logic behind this "offer."