Small rant: Perhaps I’m getting old and cynical, but the entire process through their sites feels a lil sketchy lol
Sure, it requires the basics, along with your SSN and cellphone to receive a text confirmation. Can’t just be me, right?
Anyways, thanks for answering my crazy questions due to my lack of faith in the safety of the internet in the days of SEO’s. 🤣
I’m reasonably certain they have all been hacked recently, and they don’t take security seriously, because: Why bother? They’ll never face any serious consequences, and their power will continue unchecked.
I mean, this is exactly how it feels these days, and it sorta does feel like the entry field for my information on those sites isn’t that safe lol. Let alone professional, makes you wonder if the sites legitimate. 🥴
Objectively speaking, I don’t think that entire industry is legitimate.
We are in agreement there lol
I’ve never heard of freezing a credit score, this sounds like a great way for some company to make money by assuring you that they’ve done something that cannot be done.
No. Almost lost our house build because it took them so long to unfreeze. Some agencies are easy. Some are outright customer hostile. I won’t do it again.
I’m curious which credit agency you had trouble with. The big 4 can all be done online, instantly. Transunion, Experian, Equifax, and Innovis.
Just last month I was signing up for a new bank account and had to unfreeze my credit to get it done. I turned it off, signed up, turned it back on. All within a few minutes.
I don’t recall honestly but it wasn’t working. Either way, be careful because you’re literally at their mercy.
I froze three and was given a code to unlock them temporarily (or something this was like 8 years ago).
Gave the code to my bank when applying for a home loan. It didn’t work. Ended up just unfreezing so they could do their job.
Costs like $12 every time you want to freeze. It’s a racket.
You got scammed by one of the credit bureau’s dark patterns to buy a service you don’t need. It shouldn’t cost any money to freeze/unfreeze your credit. You can do it online with each of them for free.
Which one required money to unfreeze? Because that definitely sounds sketchy.
It wasn’t money to unfreeze. It was money to re-freeze after.
You shouldn’t have had to pay anything. I just put a “thaw” on mine two nights ago, which is a temporary unfreeze, and it was free with all three bureaus.
Yeah the temporary unfreeze was what wasn’t working and it was holding up my credit union.
Don’t schedule a thaw. Just do it all manually: unfreeze, apply, and then freeze again.
That’s what I eventually did. Except without the refreeze because it was going to cost me $12 which while a small amount, is definitely a ripoff.
That can’t be right because credit-freezing must be free by law. You can do it an infinite amount of times for free. I think the website may be misleading you into a different thing (it’s either Experian or Equifax that is grotesquely adept at trying to get its customers to pay). Which bureau is it? I could try to get you the correct URL. Some of them really try to hide it. It’s such a disgusting practice.
