Some recommend to do this a few hours in advance to make sure that it gives the agencies time to “unfreeze” your credit although they say that most times it happens instantaneously. Then, if you are going to apply for credit somewhere, you can unfreeze it and it should open everything up for you to obtain credit normally. I recommend to everyone that they download the free TransUnion and Equifax apps on their phone and then click the button on the home screen to freeze your credit. My hope in explaining my journey through identity fraud is to provide tools to resolve this issue if it happens to you and possibly even prevent it from happening. Once another month passes I am hopefully to be done with this mess without any real damage done and just the inconvenience of the amount of time that was spent on cleaning this up. Verizon ranks the worst on my evaluation because they never communicated if charges had been placed on an account in my name and required the most work on my end to dispute potential charges and in the end, I never was able to submit my paperwork.Īt this point I am just waiting for final resolutions and hoping to see balances removed from my account at Credit Karma which is generally delayed by 1-2 weeks. At this point, I stopped wasting my time with Verizon and have decided to not do any more unless I receive a statement stating that I owe them something. After going through all of that, I received a response that my submission was unable to be received and to call them.
This was the only vendor that required it, however Target and Victoria Secret did ask that I send it in as well but it was not required. They also required a police report be filed in order to process my claim. When I called the number on the letter and told them what was going on I was directed to a website where I needed to upload a bunch of my information along with utility bill, insurance card, and my driver’s license to verify my identity. I’ve never received a bill from them (which sounds great) but I had that hard inquiry and a letter from them to contact them about my account because I haven’t “used the line/s I recently activated”.
The least helpful response I received during this has been with Verizon Wireless. This was a huge relief to know that they released me from liability so that I could focus on the other accounts. I gave them my email so that I could get the results faster and in 10 minutes I had received an email from AT&T stating they completed their investigation and found that this was fraudulent and they have removed the charges from my name and will be updating my information with the credit bureaus. Once connected the following morning, I explained what had happened and that other companies where also victims in this fraud and AT&T offered to send the results of their investigation by mail or email. This was understandable and the customer rep gave me a direct line to call so that I could expedite this process. I called AT&T around 8 pm but was advised to call back the next day when their fraud department had office hours. I’ll start with the easiest vendor and that was by far AT&T. How a company handles these issues really leaves an impression on someone going through this issue and I can tell you firsthand that the companies that make you go through the most hoops to remove liability when in reality it is their fault for giving credit so easily can really turn away future business. I called each of these vendors to let them know that I did not open these accounts and to close them to avoid future spending on them and that these accounts were opened fraudulently.Īs I called each vendor, I experienced different results that I will explain below. Statements and store credit cards from Victoria Secret, Target, AT&T, Verizon were in my mailbox telling me about “my” recent spending spree. About 10 days after locking everything down, I returned home to retrieve my mail and I had quite a surprise. I was leaving the country in a few days and after locking everything down, I wanted to remove the ability of this happening while I was unreachable. At this point, I thought I was in the clear.