Understanding Alerts From Your Credit Monitoring Service

When you sign up for a credit monitoring service, you will be provided with a number of options as to how you want to be notified of changes to your credit report. The most common ways to be notified are by e-mail and SMS. Once this is set up, you will begin receiving an update every time something happens to your credit report with the three major reporting agencies.

But what do these updates actually mean, and how do you decipher them? What information will be included in the notification, and how do you act on this if it is incorrect? In this article, we will attempt to answer all these questions.

Receiving and Reviewing a Notification

In almost all cases, when you receive notification from your credit monitoring service, a minimal amount of detail will be provided. This is to protect your safety and your identity. To view the applicable information relating to the alert, you will need to either contact the credit reporting agency, or go on to that reporting agency's website and log on.

From here, you will be able to view the exact details of the notification. Most credit reporting agencies provide you with the facility to take the following action after a notification has been issued:

• Mark the entry as correct and valid.
• Dispute the entry and request a resolution service.
• Mark the entry as fraud.
• Request a change to the entry before it is processed.

Of course, each and every reporting agency has a different process on the above four action, however in essence they are the same.

Why Don't All Three Credit Reporting Agencies Alert Me?

A common question which is regularly asked is "why don't I receive a notification from all three credit reporting agencies at the same time"? The answer to this is really quite simple. In reality, creditors do not always notify all of the credit reporting agencies when they make changes. They may have special contracts with one or two of the agencies, which will mean that the third is not included in any reporting.

For this reason, you may receive a notification from two of the credit reporting agencies - i.e. Equifax and Experian - but not the third - i.e. TransUnion. This should not be a concern whatsoever.