Posted on January - 09 - 2012

Erica Sandberg: Who do you pay when a debt goes into collection?

Dear Opening Credits, My wife and I, like so many others, have been trying to get above water financially for the past few years. I’m nearing 60 and a U.S. Air Force disabled veteran. A credit card that we had, in my wife’s name, was to Lowe’s Consumer, and we closed it back in mid-2010. The original debt was $6,300, but with interest in 2010 the debt became $9,199. They charged it off. We then began getting a total of 26 documented phone calls in three months from a collection agency named Bay Area Credit showing the creditor to be GE Consumer Finance. Then after a couple of months, I began documenting the 229 phone calls from the next collection agency, ERC, between May and Dec. 7, 2011, showing the creditor as General Electric Capital Corp. That collector stopped calling us on Dec.

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Posted on January - 07 - 2012

Why Your Credit Score Just Got More Confusing

Many financial consumers have learned about the secret about purchasing their credit scores. It is actually a dirty secret because the credit bureaus that sell these scores do not have to clearly disclose to you the facts about the scores you are buying. Let us tell you why your credit score just got more confusing: The scores you buy are not the scores used by lenders.

Government Studies Purchased Credit Scores
The scores you buy are referred to as “educational scores”. One of the new financial regulations passed by the Obama Administration required the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to study the impact of different credit scoring models. The study titled “The Impact of Differences Between Consumer and Creditor; Purchased Credit Scores” was published and reported to Congress this past July.

The CFPB report validates that some of the credit scores consumers can purchase are used widely by creditors; others are not. Read more…

Posted on January - 05 - 2012

Your 5 Dollar Footlong Could Cost Much More!

This happened because these stores were not updating their point of sale machines according to the franchise suggested upgrade schedule. As a result the hackers were able to install code in the point of sale machines that logged the card information and then sent it to a FTP server.  The thieves were blatant enough to print out there own credit cards with false names on them!

What is so scary about this kind of attack is that it is virtually undetectable by you or me. We are so used to paying with our cards that we never think our data could be stolen so easily. Keep in mind that this is extremely rare! So while it may be better to use cash in these small amounts, I would not really worry to much if I had to use my card.

In this case it does not appear these thieves were after you ID, and they did not seem to be trying to open new accounts in your name, so even being signed up with our credit monitoring service would not be able to protect you!

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Posted on January - 03 - 2012

Avoid getting conned out of money by scam mail

Junk mail is something that is irritating and annoying to most of us, but in most cases is pretty harmless – we simply tear open the envelope, discover the contents are simply junk, and dispose of the letter in the appropriate way. However, there is a more sinister, malicious type of junk mail that is targeted towards the more vulnerable consumers in the population, and these scam letters can end up costing victims a shocking amount of money, and in some cases even their homes.

These scam letters relate to all sorts of things, including foreign lotteries, fake prize draws, fake investments, and more. Of course, many of us can spot a scam letter a mile off, but there are people out there that fall for the lines that these fraudsters spin, and these are the people that are contributing to losses that amount to as much as £1 billion a year according to reports. Th

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