Getting past the automated phone system at credit bureaus

SALT LAKE CITY — A new report from the Federal Trade Commission shows at least one out of four Americans has an error on our credit report. That adds up to 52 million people.

Contacting someone at a credit bureau to help fix the mistake is notoriously difficult. However, communicating with a bureau to establish a line of credit can be equally challenging, especially when a phone tree blocks access to humans.

Denzil McGlashan and his wife left South Africa to come to Utah so they could be closer to their grandchildren. Within a few months, they set out to establish a credit record.

"I discovered things like changing your TV service provider is almost impossible if you don't have a credit record. And your insurance premiums are higher if you don't have a credit record," McGlashan said.

So he applied for credit cards from retailers such as appliance and furniture stores, but he continuously received rejection notices. McGlashan said when he called the stores, they told him it was a "technical problem."

Without any further explanation, he went online to request help from the big three bureaus — Experian, Transunion and Equifax.

"Every time I got to the point of putting in my Social Security number and then continued, it kicked me out," he said.

He called Social Security, but they told him his number was just fine. So he went back to the credit bureaus, where he tried to find someone willing to talk to him. Instead he got nothing but a pre-recorded voice.

He said he got no actual help whatsoever.

"I tried the email system. I tried phoning. It's all computerized," he said. "You push that number, you get that number. You push that number, you get this. You don't get to speak to a human to explain that your circumstances are not routine."

McGlashan did manage to get some credit reports through the bureaus' automated systems, but they didn't point to a culprit. So, after 10 months of frustration, he finally contacted me.

I put him in touch with Lorin Hanks, a credit expert who operates the company Aggressive Credit Repair.

"He wasn't sure if there was some type of block on his credit report, or because he was a new arrival perhaps he didn't have a file. Or perhaps there was a problem with it," Hanks said.

Regardless of the problem, Hanks has something the rest of don't: inside phone numbers to human beings at the three major credit bureaus. The trick to reaching a live person is to get credit reports directly from the bureaus, not from some third-party website, he said. Only those reports include the reference number needed to beat the phone tree.

"You'll go online. You'll see all kinds of phone numbers but getting through the machine that asks for a certain reference number to talk to a live person is almost impossible unless you have a reference number," Hanks said.

Many consumers, like McGlashan, don't know about the reference number. He said if he had known that's all it would take to get past the phone tree, it would have changed his 10-month ordeal.

"You have to have a credit report reference number; now they just have to tell you that," he said. "If I had that thing present, put it into the system, it would have taken me through. But there's nothing to tell you that."

Hanks talked to humans at the credit bureaus and gave the inside numbers to McGlashan.

"Lorin, in the space of a couple of hours, has managed to give me more help than I have received in the past 10 months from anyone else," McGlashan said. "I have been able to establish that I do have credit scores at those companies, and those scores would seem to indicate that I'm credit worthy."

"I don't know why they make life so hard," he added. "People need their credit. It's an important part of life."

Related topics