Missing Employments! (TransUnion)

[Anonymous]

I had been wondering why I was having problems lately getting the cards I had applied for. One applicant response I got back was that I was denied a card because conflicts in what was reported in my credit report.

After dong some research, I ended up having TransUnion send me a copy of my report so I could see for myself exactly what was going on in there. I am in a little bit of a shock after looking at it this evening.

Despite working very hard for over 20 years for more than one company, the section on my report that is supposed to list my employment shows $0 pay and not even any occupations. I don't understand this, I have always had to pay CPP & Unemployment Insurance all my working life, yet my employers are not even listed. How could something so obvoius not even be indexed here? They've made this mistake TWICE becuase I have worked for two different organizations most my life.

Even more boggling, I see they have "Student" listed as one of my previous employers, with my occupation titled as "Student" as well. ?

I'm not sure how they missed the obvious here, and I'm also not sure what to do from here. I am 100% sure the government knows my SSI since the Tax-Man takes it every year,  Or am I maybe just not undrstanding what's really supposed to go here?

Thanks in advance.

[IOBA]

You can ask TransUnion to update your occupation to CPA from student.

The CB are only as good as the information they buy, or what is inputed by potential creditors, or buy what you supply.

Should be an easy fix.

[MBOhio2]

I have been previously told the "employment" section of your credit reports had no bearing on credit decisions. Mine CRs also say "student" because, somewhere along the way, I applied for credit with the occupation "student", that was reported to the CBs and it syaed there with no other updates. I've ignored it because I thought it was irrelevant. Is that not correct?

[IOBA]

The employment has no bearing on the FICO score.   But some creditors arbitarily uses the information to help make a credit decision.

What I did with our CR is delete old stuff and have just current employment.   Really, "Unknown" is clearly wrong... as is "Enigip"  (suppose to be engineer).     I had no problems updating/correcting the employment section on our CR.   But for me, it was just that accuracy thing.  I get tee'd off when people are lazy when pulling CR and enter wrong things or misspelled things.  

[Anonymous]

My employment section lists a portrait studio I worked for in 1993-1994....under two names (the company and the parent company).  It has been out of business for more than a decade.  That's all that's listed. 

[Anonymous]

[quote]You can ask TransUnion to update your occupation to CPA from student.[/quote]

You mean, tell them I am a Certified Public Accountant? Can I even do that without proof?

I had thought these bureaus would simply look at my tax returns and index my past sallaries, etc. that way. I don't think things can be as easy as just calling them up and saying, "Hey stupid, you forgot I am making a quarter million dollars a year working at Air-France. Please update this immediately! " <click>

If it is that easy, then this really is a pretty stupid system the bureaus use.

Anyhow, the only thing I found that didn't check-out on my report is that it shows 0$ ever made. And when I applied to a few cards, I gave them my real sallary, so I can only imagine after looking at my report, that they figured I was lying in order to get the plastic. There is no other reason that I see why they would tell me that there was a conflict/disagreeement in what I told them, and what was in my report.

Tomorrow I will try to call Equifax and see if they have the same missing data.

Suggestions?

[Anonymous]

I just took a look at Equifax's forums for corrections.

Unfortunately I don't see any fields availalbe for correcting past places of employment & Salary.

That does not make sense to me, if they allow creditors to see that sensitive data, then surely they should also allow us to correct errors that go against us.

[MBOhio2]

It's not the job (or purpose) of the CBs to index employment and salary history. The CBs have no visibility to your tax returns and are not meant to serve as a verification of employment, income, etc. When you apply for credit, if the lender requires it, you provide proof of employment and income through other means (paystubs, tax returns, etc). That's a completely separate set of information.

The sole purpose of the CBs is to track your credit-related information (how much credit you have, the mix of credit, etc) and credit history. I would recommend reading this article from myfico.com:

http://www.myfico.com/CreditEducation/WhatsInYourScore.aspx

[MBOhio2]

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@Anonymous wrote:

[quote]You can ask TransUnion to update your occupation to CPA from student.[/quote]

You mean, tell them I am a Certified Public Accountant? Can I even do that without proof?

I had thought these bureaus would simply look at my tax returns and index my past sallaries, etc. that way. I don't think things can be as easy as just calling them up and saying, "Hey stupid, you forgot I am making a quarter million dollars a year working at Air-France. Please update this immediately! " <click>

If it is that easy, then this really is a pretty stupid system the bureaus use.

Anyhow, the only thing I found that didn't check-out on my report is that it shows 0$ ever made. And when I applied to a few cards, I gave them my real sallary, so I can only imagine after looking at my report, that they figured I was lying in order to get the plastic. There is no other reason that I see why they would tell me that there was a conflict/disagreeement in what I told them, and what was in my report.

Tomorrow I will try to call Equifax and see if they have the same missing data.

Suggestions?

---

Yes, you can just tell them you're a CPA and no proof is required. You could also tell them you're a monkey trainer or a rocket scientist. Again, no proof required. Lenders do not use that section of your credit reports as verification of employment. If required, you must prove employment and salary through other means (paystubs, tax returns, etc). Based on what IOBA said, it sounds like if there is conflicting info in the employment section, some lenders could make it an issue, but that would be rare because it's generally ignored. See my above post about the purpose of the CBs are credit reports.

Please someone chime in if I'm wrong here, but I don't think a lender would ever look at an income on your credit report and think you're lying because it's inconsistent with the salary information you actually provided them on the application.

[haulingthescoreup]

The employment info on your reports is pretty irrelevant. It definitely doesn't affect your FICO scores, and it would be a foolish lender who relied on what they saw there.

Several years ago, I updated my info. One report was correct, one was missing the most recent 5+ years of employment, and the third said I was still a housewife. I fixed all three, and there was no score change, and I've never had a comment by a lender.

I think having income info on credit reports is a dreadful idea. They can't get anything else right in the demographics section of the reports, and we want them to display income??

lol at the "monkey trainer" bit