There's one other thing that happened this week. I discovered that there was a fraudulent credit card opened under my name that had gone into collections. According to the records, it was opened in 7/2007 and ran up a relatively small bill of $571.
So I went through the process of notifying the credit bureaus to get it removed from my record. It was actually quite painless, and I want to at least provide all the links in one place here:
1) Obtain free copies of my credit report: http://www.annualcreditreport.com
2) Download, print, and read all the reports
3) Report disputes:
** Equifax: http://www.equifax.com/home/ - The online dispute link is at the top of the page
** Transunion: \http://www.transunion.com/corporate/personal/personal.page - The link is down the right column towards the bottom
** Experian: http://www.experian.com/index.jsp - The link is towards the bottom on the middle navigation bar
All of the companies give themselves about a month to take care of the dispute, so now I have nothing to do but sit back and wait. I suspect this won't be too difficult of a dispute because everything is relatively new. By the way, I do think that credit reports should be checked at least once a year, and the annual credit report link that I gave allows you to look up your report once a year for free.
