Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] I am on the phone with Mansa Musa from MoneySmartLife.org that means we're both back. It's Take Control Tuesday.
[00:00:08] And Mansa, we're going to jump right in today with something that a lot of people are not familiar with. We know about the credit bureaus that give us our score. But you're telling me that there are secondary credit bureaus that we need to be aware of? Yeah, the three prime bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, most people know about those.
[00:00:33] You know how to dispute information.
[00:00:37] What a lot of people don't know about, Randy, that there are several secondary credit bureaus. These are specialized companies that collect consumer data for specific industries, so they can absolutely impact your life if the information on those bureaus is not correct. Now, they're governed by the same Fair Credit Reporting act as the three main bureaus, so they are obligated to have accurate information.
[00:01:12] But the only way you can hold them accountable is that you get the information and check it. You're entitled to a free credit report or credit reports from them just like you are at the main bureaus. But let's quickly talk about these secondary bureaus. Here are the major players.
[00:01:35] There's check systems. They track your history with checking and savings accounts. There's another one called early morning services that's used by big banks like Chase, Wells Fargo, bank of America, those kind of things.
[00:01:53] Then there's CoreLogic and LexisNexis. They track rental history, evictions, public records, and even insurance claims. Oh, wow. Car, homeowner insurance. There's Clarity Services, which is used by payday loan and subprime lenders. And then there's TeleCheck.
[00:02:19] A lot of us have seen that logo at stores, but stores use that one to talk about check issues.
[00:02:28] So you need to reach out to these bureaus. At minimum, you can do them all at the same time or just do one at a time. But you need to ask for a copy of your report, see what's on there, and then take appropriate actions if they. If it's not accurate. That's a lot. And the only one that I actually knew about was Telcheck, and I knew about the ones that tracked your rental information, but I didn't know the names of them. Right. So you got to get in there and get those cleaned up and listen, make sure your insurance claim information is accurate as well. Insurance rates are ridiculous. Yeah, they are.
[00:03:09] So make sure that that information is correct as well. Well, we'll have that information on our website at take control Tuesday.com yeah, and I want to encourage people to check out our notes on this particular episode because that's where the links of things will be to reach out to these different bureaus. Manta, as always, I truly appreciate the information that you give to us because it's helpful all the way around. Thank you.
