topic Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often in General Credit Topics

TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

EW800 — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 13:29:43 GMT

I have read a few messages in regards to folks who have had their TC account canceled because of pulling too often. I am wondering if anyone knows if these are rare or isolated incidents, or if this is a common practice of theirs. I have had TC for just over a month now and have pulled nearly every day. I am just wondering how much rick I may be in of getting booted. Thanks!

Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

smallfry — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 13:35:08 GMT

There is the additional risk of a split file with Equifax and TU. It is rare but it can happen. More so with EQ than TU I have heard.

Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 13:43:25 GMT

I don't think there is any risk of them shutting you down anymore. They seemed to have cleared up their mistake and benefit. So pull as often as you want.

On the other hand a split file is real. It usually takes more than 1 year pulling every day to split a file from what I hear. I'd not make a steady habit of pulling every day. Maybe like every other day is better. I pull mine every day around reporting times so thats like 15 times each month. I don't bother pulling on other days since nothing changes, no point.

Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

EW800 — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 14:38:15 GMT

> On the other hand a split file is real.

This is something that I am not familiar with. What is "split file"?

Thanks!

Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 15:04:54 GMT

Yeah, I'd also like to know what a split file is? Thanks.

Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

haulingthescoreup — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 19:26:58 GMT

A split file occurs when you have so much data in your file --old accounts, new accounts, hard inqs, soft inqs, you name it --that the software can no longer keep all the information in one electronic file. Some of the excess spills over or splits to form a parallel file. If it's accounts that split off, you can get two wildly varying scores, depending on which portion of the file is pulled for scoring.

Whenever I read where someone's EQ score suddenly went up 53 points, then down 53 points, then up 53 points (insert your own number), I think split. It sometimes happens on TU, but it mainly happens on EQ. It's a good idea to print out one of your full reports. If you file ever splits, fax your older report to EQ (obviously you call them first), and they can re-build your file.

EX seems to have rock-solid, stable software, where everything pretty well stays put, and I'm convinced that's why you see so many of the "prime" CCC's pulling EX. I'll bet they charge prime for it too, so as EQ and TU get their software issues under control, they're going to doing some serious marketing among lenders.

Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 19:57:28 GMT

If they close you down- you could take legal action

Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 20:05:28 GMT

Everyone has a primary file that holds X.bytes of data. Usually there is less data then this file is designed for. Once you max out that file with too much data what ever is too much starts a secondary file.

Example.
Social number 000-00-0000.001 FULL
new second file
Social Number 000-00-0000.002 Additional info.

Now the way it works is some of the data from file .001 is transferred to .002. But when you pull your score you are pulling only .001 and anything on .002 looks as if it were deleted but it is still there just under a different file name.

Lets put it in english not computer talk.
Example.
Your CR file may only hold 400 lines of information. Like typing on a piece of paper you can only type so many lines before you run out of paper. Pulling your credit report uses up one of these lines because it leaves a record that you looked at your file as a soft inquiry. So if you had 100 lines used by actual accounts and history and pulled your own credit report 301 times you just split your file since the last pull exceeded the limit of your file length. So a second file is created to split the data between them. It's not actually 400 lines but that explains the split file.

Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

haulingthescoreup — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 20:12:28 GMT

Thanks pizza, that's a lot more precise than my version. Whenever I type my version, I'm also waving my arms around a lot, but that doesn't exactly come through on the post.

Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 03:52:41 GMT

pizza, hauling, thank you both. both explanations were clarifying. thanks.

Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 03:58:05 GMT

The bottom line is there's no real reason to pull daily, other than sheer geekery. I'd say once a week is quite adequate, unless a score monitoring product shows a substantial change in a credit score.

Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 07:07:08 GMT

TheNewWorldMan wrote:
The bottom line is there's no real reason to pull daily, other than sheer geekery.

Who? Us?

Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 13:50:53 GMT

pjxf99 wrote:

TheNewWorldMan wrote:
The bottom line is there's no real reason to pull daily, other than sheer geekery.
Who? Us?

Honestly a few years ago I would have agreed with that, but when you are in the repair process things change SO often. There was a period where I would notice a difference almost every day. We could all argue about how often to pull, when is too much, etc. but the bottom line is, when you offer a service saying it's okay to pull every 24 hours, then they should expect and allow people to do just that...

Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

haulingthescoreup — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 15:42:21 GMT

If you have 15 active accounts, and they all report at different times, and there are 30-31 days in the month, then you can easily have something different going on every other day.

But I admit, I'm at the point that there is absolutely nothing else I can do but watch time go by. (Well, besides send out fruitless GW's.) It's very weird to have score changes only happening once a month, or even less frequently. I've gotten used to frequent explosions, not these occasional pops. So I'm slowing down a lot on TC pulls, other than when I pull out of boredom and sheer frustration.

Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

Anonymous — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 20:58:34 GMT

This was very useful information. I didn't realize there might be an implication to pulling too often. I admit to pulling everyday because I usually take a few minutes a day to devote to my financial stuff: pay off all my credit cards (I never carry a balance so immediately go on-line to pay them after I incur charges on them), check my stocks, etc. With respect to my credit, I'm been cleaning up some stuff and carefully applying for new credit (although I know I'm getting dinged on average age I'm still hoping the overall result will be a good positive one in about a year, when I want to apply for a mortgage loan). Knowing that my own inquiries could result in a split report was something I'd never considered so (i) thanks for that bit of knowledge learned from the board and (ii) I suppose I should really limit once a week at most. My other issue is I have both TU 3-in-1 service and Experian's service and pull *both* some days (it's a timing issue, TU makes you wait 24 hours whereas Experian just makes you wait until after midnight, but that report only gives me Experian). Again, thanks for the info.

Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:40:47 GMT

I sometimes pull every other day so I don't have to worry about the 24 hr 1 min thing. Just when ever I feel like since it is more than 24 hours.

Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

jackg — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 19:40:15 GMT

Last week I spoke with the COO of TU and he told me after you have requested 63 updates to your credit report it defaults back to info that existed prior to the 63 updates. He indicated they are working hard to fix it and are implementing some changes as they go. For example, last week the number of inquiries carged to me went from zero to 14 overnight. I did nothing to initiate any inquiries.

Anyway, after they discovered that it was their mistake he called to apoligize and told me they removed all the inquiries. So if you have strange things happening to your TU credit report as reported by TC contact them and dispute what happened, if it's negative of course.

Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

EW800 — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:53:05 GMT

Jackg: This is very interesting - also scary. Are you saying that after we pull our creidt report 63 times, that all of the data on the report goes back to whatever it was before the 63 started? This could mean that all the data on our TU report could go back to whatever it was say a year ago? I have been puling via TrueCredit almost every day for the last 45 days or so. This has me scratching my heading, wondering if I am getting close to trouble with TU.

Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:34:42 GMT

I'd like to point out that you can also get a split file for other reasons. I had one with EQ because of a name suffix (I am technically II).

EQ had two files, some creditors reported with the name suffix, some did not, and apparently EQ simply couldn't handle it.

It would split again from pulling every day when I was repairing, but it seems to be fixed as of recent.

Re: TrueCredit - How much risk in pulling too often

haulingthescoreup — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:08:34 GMT

@EW800 wrote:
Jackg: This is very interesting - also scary. Are you saying that after we pull our creidt report 63 times, that all of the data on the report goes back to whatever it was before the 63 started? This could mean that all the data on our TU report could go back to whatever it was say a year ago? I have been puling via TrueCredit almost every day for the last 45 days or so. This has me scratching my heading, wondering if I am getting close to trouble with TU.

I'm not jackg, but I've pulled WAY more than 63 times, and I've never had a problem. This sounds like one of those off-the-wall problems that crop up occasionally with all software products, no matter how lovingly designed and maintained. (And some products are a lot worse than others, LOL, including my work software. )

IMO, people get way more worried about TC than they ought to. Yes, many people were unjustly kicked off, mostly last summer and early fall, including one of our mods who had pulled less than a dozen times, as I recall. But this seems to be pretty much in the past, doubtless at the advice of their attorneys. Many problems I read about now seem to involve log-ins, especially during the trial period or soon thereafter. The biggest problem here, besides not being able to access your reports while TC untangles the mess, is that you get to chat with the overseas call center, which is always an adventure.

But other than bugs that sometimes pop up and lock people out for a while, it pretty well does what it's supposed to. My feeling is that if you paid for it, use it! If it crashes and you can't update for more than a few days, demand a partial refund for the month. HTH