Credit Monitoring Service We All Must Have! MyCreditKeeper.com
Written: Jun 16 '07 (Updated Jun 16 '07)
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You haven’t expected me to be positive about something, have you? Here, it is a real deal for losers and people with mediocre credit history, that is, for most of us. A must have deal. Honestly! Other good reason to use CK is to protect yourself from identity theft. You do not have to be a loser for that one.
Introduction to being a loser.
Do I qualify in this category?
Apparently most of the credit monitor services clients are losers. Otherwise why would you need a monthly monitoring of your score? If you pay everything on time and have no problems with law, your credit score will always go up and you can check that three times a year for free at: www.annualcreditreport.com/ . There are three agencies there and you can check each every four month.
On the other hand, if you are a loser, like I am, you DO NEED CREDIT KEEPER! Being a loser means you will not qualify for the lowest mortgage rate or you won’t get any loan at all (this covers at least 50% of the Nation). It means you defaulted credit cards, you missed payments, you are being sued, etc… do you recognize yourself?
If you have problems getting a loan – you can try Prosper that gives loans to people with less than perfect FICO score.
Problem denial.
This is the major psychological problem for people with bad credit history: they deny that they have a problem, that it is their problem and that they are in control of it. This is very similar to denial of disease used by charlatans to manipulate us and get our cash. I used to live with a guy who would not pick up his mail and phone calls just because he was scared of credit card companies, then collection agencies, then attorneys… Did that help him improve his credit score? No!
The only way to really get out of your problems is to accept the fact that you have them (look at your credit score often), to accept that it is your problem and deal with it on day-to-day basis. Nothing helps more than continuous monitoring of your credit reports! This way you actually see how your actions help you improve it gradually and you can no longer deny that you cannot deal with that.
Credit Keeper
What They Do?
Credit Keeper is a service that provides monthly credit reports from all three credit report agencies for $9.99. You can try it for free for 30 days and then subscribe to it. This service is provided by HSBC bank, a very serious financial institution, so you should not be deterred by fear to lose you identity or something.
FICO Scores
In addition to a full-blown credit report you also get your three FICO scores and conversion to a new scale for each of them. This is very nice as you do not get those with you free credit reports for some reason. You also get a lousy automatic explanation for the factors that impact your score. They are quite general, but are worth remembering: do not apply for many cards, this will bring your score down, do not have high balance on your credit cards (actually the ratio of balance to credit line), do not smoke (just kidding). Taking a car loan improves your score, paying off credit card improves it as well and many more.
"What If" Tool
In fact, you have a tool that allows you to predict the change of your score depending on your actions: you can see how paying off your cards or closing the loan will affect your score. This is very useful feature that allows you to demystify the complex formula used to calculate your score and put priorities right.
Thus, for example, you will see what are the major factors impacting your score (defaulted loan or unpaid credit card), the medium importance (late payments) and low importance (high ratio of balance to credit line). Knowing that you can focus on eliminating the major factors instead of wasting your time on paying the credit cards that have high balances (a minor factor).
There is a big drawback in this system – you cannot view your old credit reports and compare your score to that a month before. Well, you know how to save the documents, right? Use Excel to track them. This is very useful.
Inaccuracy Tracking.
This is a great feature that automatically gives you number of differences in your three credit reports and analyzes their source. You credit score may very by as much as 70-80 points depending on the agency and inaccuracies may occur very often. In fact there is a 71% chance that that happened to you! The difference due to these errors is a cause for 25% of credit denials. So you should not discount this.
My Term In Prison.
In fact, I found out that I have been sued and sentenced to JAIL from this report! No kidding! Thanks God I saw that! I called the phone number listed in the report and indeed, I was sued and sentenced…I had no idea that happened and could easily be arrested on the street any time and put in jail for one year because of that. I filed motion and charges were lifted, but I am very thankful to the Credit Keeper for that.
N.B.:
Yeh, dude, I am a criminal, with Ph.D. If you don’t give me the highest score for this review, I’ll hunt you down! &&@%$!
Automatic Alerts
Credit Keeper sends you automatic alerts via email and mail if there is a major change in you credit report or/and score. This way you know if someone has applied for card using your ID. This is also very useful service and allows you to be in control of your score.
Report Filing.
Unfortunately you have to fill in the report with information about inaccuracies and mail it to them so they will forward it to the appropriate agency. Free annual report allows you to fill in the form on the website. But this is understandable – Credit Keeper does not deal with that directly and they do not get paid for that.
International Access
Another very important thing for me is that I can access the website from any place – I fly a lot and I often login from EU. It appears that YOU CAN NOT login to free annual report from outside the US! I have no idea to why is it so.
Fee.
The nominal fee is $9.99 for three reports per month. This comes to $120 a year and is very good compared to ordering reports from all three of the agencies one by one. Similar service from Transunion will cost you same $9.99, but you only get one agency. 3-buereau credit monitoring is $14.95 per month and 3B credit report is $29.95. So it is a very good deal for you!
At the same time, you must make sure they DO CHARGE YOU $9.99. Sneaky bustards like to change this fee without notice (at least to me). I am paying $12.95 for some reason and, moreover, this month I was charged $9.99 in addition to that. I am in process of resolving this issue now. It is also important that they are not very accurate: my account had to be renewed and I was told that I had to call in for security reasons, but I asked to do that via email… They told me that they cannot open a new account for me and… next day I receiver automated email that this account has been opened. Well…what’s the point of worrying about security then?
The Website
The website itself is not really great but they started to upgrade it last week, so we may expect improvements. Everything works just fine; it is just a bit slow and clumsy. This does not impair the information itself though.
In addition to credit report, you may also request neighborhood, driver and medical reports (yes, neighbors spy on you all the time). I have not use these features myself, but they may be useful to some.
Take Home Note:
My Credit Keeper is a great cheap service that allows you to track your credit reports and scores from all three agencies once a month for $9.99. It is very useful took to fight your own mistakes and correct your score gradually and this is certainly is more valuable than $120 a year. In fact I saw my score going up 100 points from the time I started to use the service. It was not the Keeper who paid off my balances, but it was continuous monitoring of the progress that gave me patience to understand the priorities and consistently improve my score point-by-point.
I strongly recommend this tool to all of you losers, college students and even those concerned about identity theft. It is worth your money. But be cautious, this service likes to cheat on you a bit and may charge you extra sometimes.
Remember – you must not apply for too many cards, never apply for Orchard Credit Card Scam from the same company and pay off all your debts first, only after you do so you can start thinking about investing in stocks!
Best of luck,
Alex
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
rabodzey
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Member: Alex
Location: Cambridge, MA, USA
Reviews written: 68
Trusted by: 19 members
About Me:
I enjoy writing essays on various topics, especially if it helps people.
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