[whathappenedto]

When I tried to get my annual credit report, I find that the credit agencies constantly have trouble validating my identify online even though I have one of the simplest reports. A single same address for decades, no loans, paid off every month.

They randomly will say that I can't be verified, and I need to snail mail them copies of a bunch of identifying documents to get my credit report. I imagine this is a common issue, and somehow still satisfies their requirement to offer the annual credit report online.

[couchand]

I had a similar experience recently: one agency report came through fine, one report came through with mysterious issues, and one just would not ever let me verify without snail mail.

When it came time for my "real" credit report to be run, however, there was no problem at all verifying my identity or getting the accurate information. Weird, huh?

[eslaught]

Your comment exactly describes my experience.

What can we do about it? It feels hard because for any given individual they can say: "the problem is you, not us." We'd need some sort of aggregate data to prove that there's something systematic going on.

[colejohnson66]

Why not just view them online? Sites like CreditKarma have existed for years. And if you don’t trust third parties, Experian let’s you view theirs on their own site. The benefit is being able to see updates more than once a year. CreditKarma updates every week.

[whathappenedto]

Yeah that's what I'm trying to do, to view them online. I've looked up what's going wrong, and quite a few people have this issue that they can't be verified online.

[colejohnson66]

That's bizarre. Apologies for not understanding.

[ziml77]

If they can't verify your identity with enough confidence, would you prefer they just show the report anyway?

It's possible that your situation being so simple is exactly what makes it hard for them to be confident that the requestor is you.

[whathappenedto]

I find that hard to believe because they can verify my identify when I sign up for an online bank, or apply for an apartment, or do anything else with the same information. I'm more inclined to believe it's not a priority, and don't care about making it better because the law doesn't say how good their service has to be, just that it exists. I'll note that when I sign up with the same information to their paid service as a trial, there's never any issue with verifying my identity.

[cure]

> It's possible that your situation being so simple is exactly what makes it hard for them to be confident that the requestor is you.

You know, in theory this sounds reasonable. However:

- these organizations are grossly incompetent (is there anyone left in the US who has not had their data leaked by a credit bureau?)

- the incentives are very badly misaligned (it is our data, but we are not their customers, other corporations are, and they only provide this service because the law requires it)

I'm going to hazard a guess that it's just really crappy software that's causing this.

[sidewndr46]

Same here, there is at least one credit union that essentially treats me as persona non grata when I contact them.

Somehow each time that I go to do a hard credit check, they are able to provide a credit score for the lender however.