Tag Archives: credit

Free Credit Reporting Sites – Credit Sesame vs Credit Karma

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Keeping a good credit score is important to business success. For years now there have been places where you can view your credit scores online, but all of them charged for this service, some gave away free trials but if you did not cancel in full ASAP you would be charged a huge fee, and they made it hard to cancel.  Sites had to charge because the data cost them money, so did building the site.

Check your score for freeAlso for the longest time credit card companies would pay sites who refer them business (ie. Applications) a small commission for doing so.  Finally someone got the bright idea to make a credit score site and is paid for, not by the users, but by the advertisers, the lending  companies who the site would suggest that people use.

Two such sites popped up.  One is Credit Karma, and the other is Credit Sesame.  Both sites offer scores for free, and limited credit information and both offer advice and suggested loans or cards you may receive based upon your credit score.

But Which One is BETTER?

I have signed up with both of these sites a while ago, and I have been using both for months now, both have their pros and cons.  Here is a breakdown of the differences.

[table caption=”Credit Karma vs Credit Sesame” border=”1″]

“”,Credit Karma,Credit Sesame

Founded,March 2008,September 2012

Score Source, TransUnion, Experian National~~Equivalency Score~~this is a score that is usually~~10-15 points less than a normal FICO Score

Data Freshness, Every 5 Days~~I have noted that when they both update on the same day this is much more fresh, Once per month

Design, Clean and fresh blue design, fresh teal design with but much more pushy with the advertising and trying to upgrade you to full credit reports for extra money

Android App, Very nice app with lots of info and is clean, Not nearly as clean with much less data and more ads

Connections, Allows you to get data from some of your credit cards directly to show on the site, Does not do this.

History Feature, Shows a list of all changes from last report and keeps track of it in a feed type log~~they also show a graph of the last 12 months of scores and you can also see last 12 months of balance history of any card, Just a few months of your score only

Best Feature,The See how you compare section,Allows you to enter your financial goals and it will inform you when they find a product to fit that goal.

Worst Feature,They use TransUnion which is not as correct and is more focuses on the east coast way of doing things, You can’t actually see who your debt is with~~it is all just given names like Credit Card 1 and Auto Loan not the real names of the companies~~the information is much more limited

Advice, The Advice is mostly Q&A that is crowdsourced it has quite a few great questions with some really good answers~~There are also 5 Calculators along with 61 articles about credit and a fairly active blog, The advice they offer is all products from their sponsors that may help you go more into debt

[/table]

Conclusion

In summary I think that Credit Karma is a mature all around good tool, they offer a fairly good level of information and allow you to view each open account you have on your CBR in full with history graphs and sometimes it can link to your actual bank to get even more current data (This data does not reflect in your score).  The Advice section is robust.  There is a good focus on the amount of your available credit that you are using, which is one of the most important things you need to focus on Credit Sesame does not show this information at all.

Basically I feel that Credit Karma is a really good tool on many levels, something that can help you out. Credit Sesame on the other hand brings almost nothing to the table except more offers and a lot of advertising.  The only reason to use it is to check a different credit company to see if there are differences.

The secrets of how to dispute things on your credit report.

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The quickest way to improve your credit is to work to remove things on your credit report that are negative.  This is not as hard as people think.  Before going forward, remember that is against the law to lie in any of the forms that you will sending to the credit reporting agencies.  But also remember that the law also says that an item in your report needs to be 100% correct for it to remain in your report; so even one small mistake in data is ground for deletion.  The problem is that the credit reporting industry make more money from someone who has poor credit, because they buy more reports, they try to fix their credit by many very expensive means and they try more often to get credit letting the credit companies to make money when they sell your reports to the companies you apply with.  They have many reasons to try to keep your report as negative as they can.

But the law is on your side.  Now here is the secret that I have seen presented at least twice at really high priced seminars presented by very successful multi-millionaires.  The law states that the info on your credit report MUST be 100% correct.  But there is a conflicting privacy law that forces them to redact most of your account information.  This turns account number 123456789 into xxxxxx789.  Because of the conflict of these two laws it has created a loophole that millionaires walk through.  It allows them to dispute that the information is not 100% correct and MUST be deleted.

They simply send a letter to the credit agency that says something like this.  “Hello my name is John Doe, and I am writing to clarify an item on my credit report.  My SSN is 111-11-1111.  You have listed an account with account number xxxxxx789.  This account number does not match the number that is on my statements from MegaBux Bank.  Because the information about this account is not accurate I ask that you remove it ASAP as the law requires.”    The credit agencies hate it when they receive a letter like this because they know that there is no way they can keep the item on your report.  The MAJOR problem with this tactic is that it totally removes the trade line, and many people have poor credit more because of a lack of trade lines than from negative information.  If you have a 6xx score and you have less than 12 trade lines, it would actually hurt you more to remove an item with a few 30 day late payment than it would to keep it on your report.   But if you are in the 7xx range and have 20 trade lines it will likely be much better to remove the trade line.  (On a side note, the reason most millionaires use this trick is not to remove negative items, they use it to remove mortgages on investment real estate, because many banks have a limit on how many mortgages you can have at one time…doing this makes them not show up on the credit report.  They still must declare them all in the application but for some reason banks look at the credit report more than the loan application and give the credit anyway.)

If you want to keep the trade line you often can change it to make it less negative by disputing minor issues with it.  What follows is a set of instructions on how to dispute your credit the way most people do it.  Start with this first, you may get 50% or more of your negative items changed to positive, which is much better than deleting them.

With this economy you need all the help you can get to fix the last few years, and I truly hope that this blog entry helped someone.  If this helps you please comment below.

Start the dispute process

You have every right to dispute inaccuracies in your credit report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), and the credit bureaus and your creditors are obligated to correct inaccurate information in a timely manner.

How to file a dispute

  1. Contact the creditor with the incorrect information
    • We’ve created a sample letter that you can use to start the process
    • Some creditors will correct minor errors over the phone, so we recommend that you contact the creditor first
    • Your list of creditors can be found in the Creditor Contact section of your credit report
  2. Contact the credit bureaus
    • Disputes may be sent to the credit reporting agencies online or in a letter:
    • Experian – Disputes are not accepted by telephone, but you may file a dispute online(link to Experian online form)
    • Equifax – Disputes are accepted online (link to EFX dispute page), or you use one of our sample letters and mail your dispute
    • Trans Union – Disputes are accepted online (link to TU dispute page), or use one of our sample letters and mail your dispute
    • Once the credit reporting agency receives your request, it has 30 days to investigate and provide a response to you in writing. During its investigation, the credit reporting agency will contact the institution that provided the disputed information to seek verification of its accuracy. If the disputed information cannot be verified, it must be removed from your credit report or updated per your request. Information that is verified as accurate may remain in your credit files for as long as allowed by law.
    • You may file more than one dispute at a time. You may also file disputes with more than one credit reporting agency. Each dispute will be investigated separately, but may be processed simultaneously.
  3. Follow up
    • If you have not received a response to your request after 30 days, write a letter to the credit reporting agency indicating that you have not been notified of the results.
    • We’ve created a sample letter that you can customize as necessary to explain your case. Print, sign and mail the letter to the appropriate credit reporting agency, keeping a copy for your records.
  4. Don’t give up
    • If upon receiving the results of the investigation you are still not satisfied, you may request information regarding the person or institution that supplied the information.
    • We’ve created a sample letter that you can customize to your needs and include any additional information necessary to explain your case. Print, sign and mail the letter to the appropriate address, keeping a copy for your records.
    • You may also wish to add a 100-word consumer statement to your credit file explaining the reason for the disputed information so potential creditors have the total picture.
  5. If you do not recognize information on your credit report and suspect that you may be a victim of identity theft, in addition to filing a dispute, we recommend you file an Identity Theft claim.