[charlesbahn]

So the "Have you been scammed" thread reminded me to warn the group of a credit card scam and the value of Equifax.

I am a partner in a small business. The business has its offices in a large commercial building. The business pays all of its accounts out of it's operating account and does not use a line of credit or credit card.

Recently, the partnership decided to acquire and use a company credit card for the convenience of paying some expenses. An application was made to the bank that we do business with, and it was declined due to the fact that our business had recently defaulted on a credit card and the account had been closed (WTF ?)

So it turns out, that another person in the building had stolen our mail with a credit card offer, activated the card but changed the billing and notification address. This happened 5 years ago and over that period he would make charges on the account and then pay them off. He apparently stopped making payments about one year ago and the card went into collections and was canceled. We never knew about it because the statements and all correspondences went to a different address. Fortunately it was not a large amount, around 2K, but it disrupted our business as we could not acquire credit until the bank resolved it.

So now I'm an Equifax believer. I subscribe to most of their services (ID theft monitoring and protection, and to monitor my credit score). With this service you can regularly check the balances of all of your mortgages, revolving, and credit card accounts and make sure the balances are (about) right and no new ones show up.

It's simple to set up- they all ready know every debt you have down the last penny, your payment history, etc.

Unfortunatley there are some real a$$ holes out there.