Credit Nightmare

Credit Cards and Balances, Trucks, Tolls OH MY!

Our nations credit system is a nightmare. Corporations can make decisions or mistakes and dish out punishment as they see fit. We have to dodge the blows and bear the burden of proof.

Todays example is not technically credit related but would of been if I had moved and not left a fowarding address.

I sold my old truck to the dealer in July 04 for the new truck. Yesterday I receive a notice from the NTTA (North Texas Toll Authority) with a picture of my old truck and the bill of 231.75 for running the toll booth 10 times. Hell according to this record he made a 10 mile trip between 2 booths in less than 6 minutes.. that's about 110mph.. IIRC the speed limit on the George Bush turnpike is 60Mph.. that's 50 miles over the speed limit and a jailable offense. Remember these turnpike violations occured more than 30 days ago but today the county said the truck is still in my name. So not only is he running tolls and speeding excessively the jerk is dodging his taxes on the veichle. Of course I have proof that this truck was sold but what if he robbed a bank or killed someone and all they had was a tag number. The cops would come directly to my house and arrest me or worse.


Another weird thing struck me today. Equifax ignored my requests that my credit be repaired of certain clerical errors. Looks like CSC Credit Services holds my credit information here. What I dont get is if I lived in North Carolina Equifax would be managing it but becuase I live in Texas some company I never heard of has some right to take my records from Equifax a nationally known company and hold this information in El Paso, Texas. Are our credit records like Avon sales districts or what? I should have the right to know that my records were transferred from who and to who and printouts before and after the transferr to make sure that the information was re-entered correctly. Either way my 4.75 paid to the USPS to deliver the complaints was wasted becuase I now have to resubmit the same information to CSC Credit. Becuase Equifax cant foward it.


Finally my original thoughts on credit card balances. Did you know if you had one 300 dollar credit card it could be hurting your credit? It can shave up to 50 or so points off your credit scores. All becuase you're using 50% of your credit. It does not matter if you made 20k a year or 200k a year it does the same to you. If you had a 3000 dollar card and ran it up to the 50% mark it does the same amount of damage. My point here is that this 300 dollar card I was using as a budgeting tool and to re-establish my credit. After a year I learn that it did nothing becuase each month it usually gets reported before I pay it off. So it usually has a balance of 190-250 dollars sitting on it in the credit companies records. Reguardless that amount is 0 at the beginning of the month. So if you can get the bigger card I'd do it. You are more flexible to use it for small amounts if you keep your head on your shoulders. However the smaller card may do nothing for you other than bring your score down 50 points and if you were looking for good interest on a Car or House then you may be shooting youself in the foot. So unless your credit is so good you consistently stay in the 730's despite using 75% of your credit cards then watch out you may end up paying somewhere else.

posted by Corey @ 9:12 PM