Locked Your Credit Report Access? Make Sure to Leave Time for Credit Checks

Because of my identity theft, I’d frozen my credit reports at all three
bureaus so no one could apply for credit in my name without unfreezing
them.

If you lose the PIN number they give you when you freeze your credit you are in BIG trouble in terms of hassle and wasted time.

It
turns out credit card companies do not know in advance, or won’t tell
you, which bureau they will check your credit on. Or perhaps they check
all three. In any event you will need to individually unfreeze your
credit lock temporarily at Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion if you
need to have your credit checked.

I easily unfroze my credit
reports at 2 of the bureaus, using a PIN they had given me. But for the
third bureau I could not find my letter with the PIN.

Of course that was the one that the credit card company wanted to check.

This
particular bureau has no way to reach humans. I finally was owning up
to the fact that I’d have to mail them a certified letter with all the
proof that I’m me – when their recording said "include your PIN."

They had no instructions if you don’t know your PIN.

Thankfully the letter from them finally appeared stuck in my 3" high stack of identity theft papers.

I
gleefully called the credit card company back to say I’d gotten the
credit freeze lifted. "Has it been 5 business days since the lift?" the
guy asked.

"No 5 minutes." I said.

Call back in 5 days he told me. And so it goes on.

So follow their advice to plan ahead if you’re going to need your credit checked. I learned the hard way that YES this is true.