Credit report woes

October 30, 2018 6:14 PM

I'm trying to pull my US credit reports via annualcreditreport.com. The security questions from Experian are always a nightmare (no, I don't remember which department store credit card I opened 10 years ago!) and I inevitably get some of the answers wrong and receive an error message stating that I will need to request my Experian report offline rather than seeing it immediately online. Has anyone figured out a solution to this? Thanks!
posted by sunflower16 to Work & Money (9 answers total)

Mine actually had incorrect data. When I called whichever agency they were very nice, but they had to resort to more complicated measures before they confirmed my identity. I had to do something with a credit agency last week and one of the online questions was totally bogus (“in which city does TOTAL STRANGER own property?”) but either I guessed right or they give you one freebie anyway.

Give them a call. It’s not too painful.
posted by fedward at 7:20 PM on October 30, 2018

Sometimes the correct answer is in fact "none of the above," despite it seeming like that answer will give you an instant fail.
posted by wierdo at 7:22 PM on October 30, 2018

Sometimes the correct answer is in fact "none of the above," despite it seeming like that answer will give you an instant fail.

I once had one of these where every correct answer was none of the above. I was like... am I in the right account?? I was.
posted by greermahoney at 7:43 PM on October 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

These "security question" systems are complete crap. I have two or three accounts that still use them. I am scrupulous about recording my questions and the answers when I set them up. About 60% of the time, when I try to log in to one of these accounts, I will be offered questions that are absolutely not the ones I designated. There is no option but to call their customer service, identify myself to their satisfaction, and have them reset the account. Then I have to go in and re-create the damned questions.

I don't think these systems work well for anyone. Fortunately, most of my accounts have moved to two-factor authentication, which transmits a confirming code via phone or email.
posted by Weftage at 6:37 AM on October 31, 2018

Response by poster: To be clear, these aren't security questions that I've set up myself, and there's no two-factor auth option. This is specific to Experian and their security questions are coming from my credit history.
posted by sunflower16 at 12:54 PM on October 31, 2018

I don't know if it's because I froze my credit or what, but I ended up going through the snail-mail method to request hard-copies of my credit report from a couple of agencies this year (I don't recall which ones, but I think Experian was one) because I couldn't get the online question thing to work for me. I didn't see anything out of order on my report. If you don't mind the bit of extra hassle, it's pretty easy to do and doesn't require you to answer any knowledge-based authentication questions (as long as you mail it to the address on file for your credit, I assume).
posted by Aleyn at 1:36 PM on October 31, 2018

Response by poster: Update:

After a few tries, I managed to get my Experian credit report online. I just had to wait till I got a round of questions I happened to know the answers to. I had no issue getting my TransUnion report.

Equifax, however, still eludes me. There aren't any security questions; I just get an error immediately about not being able to get the report online. I've tried several times. I suspect it may be because I've frozen my credit, and I think I'm just going to give up.
posted by sunflower16 at 9:39 PM on November 1, 2018

I believe having a credit freeze in place requires you use the mail to request your report. They can't ask you invasive personal questions if they aren't allowed to query your credit file, after all. You should be able to remove the freeze, grab a copy of your report, and then freeze it again if you want to go that route.
posted by wierdo at 11:39 PM on November 1, 2018

Response by poster: wierdo: I have a freeze on Experian and TransUnion too and was able to receive those online (and was asked questions related to my credit history by Experian, hence this AskMe!). So freezing alone does not stop the asking of invasive personal questions but I suspect Equifax (and only Equifax) simply won’t supply a frozen account’s report online, while the other two will.
posted by sunflower16 at 3:28 AM on November 2, 2018