Has Anyone dealt with Commonwealth Financial?

[RedAngel987]

Upon reviewing my credit report, I supposedly opened an account with Commonweralth Financial four months ago. I've never heard of this company, but they are now listed on my credit report with an open balance. Googling them online brought up numerous reports of lawsuits for fraudulent practices. How do I go about contesting their claim, and removing them from my credit report?

[Anonymous]

This is an income tax forum,  it does't deal with problems people have with their credit.  you obviously have a computer so why not use its search engine to find out how to contest a crdit card you didn't open.  

[ghostlyone]

This is posted in a forum titled "Credit Score". It literally is filled with thousands of posts of people trying to deal with credit problems and getting advice back from the rest of the community. What possessed you to wake up this morning and declare: "Today, I will not only provide angry and useless input to people I don't care about, but the useless input will also be 100% inaccurate."?

[NCperson]

as a first step, suggest calling the financial institution and ask what credit they have in their records that is assigned to you.  could be a credit card you took out where Commonwealth is really the lender (retailers do this all the time -  there is a bank that is really the lender)...could turn out there was a keypunch error (it happens) where you SS# was inadvertently used. 

if you hit a dead end, contact the credit bureaus (you can just fill out the forms on their websites) to convey that you don't recognize the debts. 

is there any dollars outstanding on this debt? 

[RedAngel987]

Thank you NCperson.  I've reached out to Commonwealth but have yet to hear back from them.  It's only a charge of $96, but it still impacts my score.  With such a 'minor' amount, I suspect that many would rather pay it than go through the hassle of contesting, which is how these companies profit.  I'd prefer to avoid that trap.

As you suggested, I'll be contacting the credit bureaus as well to contest this.  What a pain!! But thank you for the advice...

[RedAngel987]

Agreed.  Thank you ghostlyone...

[NCperson]

suggest CALLING Commonwealth directly via phone; they should be able to help you 'on the fly'.  You want to pursue this and ensure the credit line is shut down by that bank...  if someone else has that card, they could be racking up more dollars as time goes on.

any chance you took out a credit card at a retailer and didn't realize that Commonwealth is really the bank behind the card? (if you have any other cards look closely at the back of the card or the statement..for example, Best Buy and Macy cards are issued by CitiBank, etc.)

good luck!