Should I Freeze my Credit?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Frozen with five agencies. Some were easier than others (Innovis didn’t seem to require much), but at least it’s done, and I can deal with anything that may already be on my report. (I’ve already checked one of the agencies once this year.)

22

I just got an e-mail from my bank – mostly a routine advertising blurb – but with an essay on this question, focused particularly on retirees: Should I freeze my credit?

They say in no uncertain terms that we SHOULD freeze our credit, retirees especially, and that merely putting up a fraud alert is substantially useless.

23

I froze mine on John Oliver’s advice too. It was $10 each for Experian and Transunion but free for Equifax. I am in Florida.

24

Here’s a great how & why reference: http://clark.com/personal-finance-credit/credit-freeze-and-thaw-guide/

25

Bumping this thread to add new info…

I applied for a credit line increase on my Bank of America card. I totally forgot about the credit freeze I’d put in place. BOA called me today and the rep said they needed my TransUnion report but it was frozen. She asked if I could unfreeze it. Neither of us knew how long it would take, so she gave me a callback number.

I went to the freeze.transunion.com Web site and logged in with the account info I’d created when I set up the freeze. It showed that I had an active freeze and gave me the option to totally remove the freeze or temporarily lift for a set time period. I chose the latter. From there I was able to set the time period (I put 2 days) and then also could have chosen a “selective lift” and probably then chose BOA but I just did “Global Lift”.

I immediately got a confirmation email from TransUnion that my lift had gone through. I called back BOA, they were able to access my TransUnion report and then approved my credit line increase (yay?)
I then went back to TransUnion’s site and cancelled the lift (which was set to expire in 2 days anyway).

The whole thing from BOA’s initial call to me cancelling the lift took about 10 minutes. Of course, I can’t speak to the other credit bureau’s process but this was seriously quick and painless.

26

I froze all three back when this was all going on. Equifax took at least 100 tries and when it finally worked, I never received a code to unfreeze it, and of course nobody at Equifax can be bothered to get back to me, so I’m not sure what I’m going to do if ever I need to unfreeze that.

And FUCK Equifax, just in case anyone is curious how I feel about them.