Credit freeze

noppenbd · #1 (**permalink**) 03-21-2008, 12:38 PM

How many of you have frozen your credit with the 3 bureaus? We just finished doing it and I was wondering if there were any negative or positive surprises to look out for. Also just curious how many are taking advantage of this.

vsjhoc · #2 (**permalink**) 03-21-2008, 03:13 PM

I did it in July 2007.

The good news: apparently no one has tried to open credit in my name (but who knows if anyone has even tried).

The bad news: whenever I want to get my credit reports or apply, I forget they are frozen and then it can be a hassle to get them thawed. Sometimes it takes 3 days. The worst was when one of the credit bureaus insisted that I had to pay $10 to unfreeze my report, and I told them by LAW there is no charge in my state. I had to talk to 5 people before I got someone who didn't even mention payment.

aevans1206 · #3 (**permalink**) 03-21-2008, 04:01 PM

Wow. I've never heard of freezing your credit. You learn something new everyday!

noppenbd · #4 (**permalink**) 03-21-2008, 06:18 PM

Clark Howard talks about it all the time on his radio show:

clarkhoward.com: Topics

In my state (Maryland) it only costs $5 per bureau so that is one reason we decided to do it. I was paying $12 a month for credit monitoring so I recouped the cost to do the initial freeze pretty quickly.