I opened a HELOC almost exactly three years ago. It was that process that led me, ultimately, to myfico.com to work on my credit. I was very, very fortunate to work with a great bank who actually listened to me, plus they were SO easy to work with (no on-site valuation, etc.). My credit scores were fair to meh (about 620, I think, or maybe 640), I had defaulted student loans and a few other crappy things on my credit reports, but they worked with me and gave me a great HELOC rate which worked out to 3.79%. I love you, PNC!
So here I am three years later: Reports are clean as a whistle. Scores are sooooooooo much better than they were back then. I decide to see if it would be a good idea to refinance my HELOC. Long story short, I can. New rate is 2.99%. It starts the clock over, plus I get a slightly higher credit limit due to increased value of my home.
I get a call today from my mortgage banker who tells me that the preliminary title work came back with lien on it!!! What??? He tells me that both of the "services" they use to put together these reports do amazingly crappy, sloppy work, and told me not to worry about it, and that he rarely sees one preliminary report come back without some huge mistake on it. I ask him for dates and case numbers and write them down. Both liens are from the state Department of Taxation, and both are at least two years old. My mortgage banker reminds me that we dealt with a similar issue while we were putting the first HELOC together. It was related to a bank account at a bank where I had never, ever had an account. The person just had the same name as me.
Well of course I am FREAKING out, because he's reading this thing to me and everything matches me except the stupid fact that THERE ARE NO LIENS on my property except the one that PNC holds themselves. He tells me I can just write and sign a letter saying that I know nothing about these liens and then they will dig deeper to clear it up.
Nope. No way, man.
Within fifteen minutes, I had located the culprit. Person who lives in the same city I do, same first, middle and last name. I found the case documents for both liens, and they had the person's address on them. Nowhere near where I live, either. Plus, I received a state income tax refund this year, and I wouldn't have if those liens were mine.
So I turned the documentation I found into PDF files and emailed them off to my mortgage guy. Greatly relieved, but still literally shaking from the adrenalin. Dang, man.
I just wanted to say what a scary thing it is to think that people can connect you with someone who just happens to have the same name. I don't believe anyone was trying to perpetrate a crime here, but sloppy record searches and reporting can really screw things up for a person. So be alert, be savvy and watch yourselves out there.
How often does this REALLY happen?
It's about the same incidence rate for the same reasons for mistakes on credit reports: happens unfortunately often.
Least sounds like it was semi-easy to resolve this time, but yeah that does indeed truly suck.
