JC Penney and finance charges!

[Andrea J.]

Paul and i headed off to the credit union today about a home eq line of credit. (no points, no closing, free app fee, 2.75% variable rate.......a no brainer i think)
So we sit down w/ Joanna and do the application. She runs a credit report . Then she eyeballs the report and says, wow you are delinquent of past 30 days on your JCPENNEY charge.
Paul and I look at each other and commented that we hadn't used that charge in years.
We finished our application. Drove over to JC Penney and as it turns out........ we are delinquent about 5 yrs. It looks like we bought mens underwear and a thick velour bathrobe in January 2004......never paid our bill!!!
They looked further into it and the mailing address is NOT even close to our old home address. We never received any statements (shame on us for not noticing).
Get this......................so they FORGAVE and DELETED the $1122 in FINANCE CHARGES and accepted our payment of $34 for the purchase.

Please everyone check your credit reports/credit scores once or twice a yr.
The funny thing is this has never come up before. We have copies of a credit report from Experion and TransUnion from the last few yrs and JC PENNEY is listed as 0 balance.

The bathrobe is worn after each shower.
The underwear has long since joined the rag bag

During all of this, i thought Paul was going to stroke out.
The nice folks at JCPENNEY were awesome to deal with.

[purpleangel]

I second that good idea!!

Don't know about other states, but in CT, everyone is entitled to a free credit report annually from each of the big three (Experion, Trans something, and Equifax). I just checked mine, and there were errors on it. I just filed an investigation (what I think they call it) with why I know these were errors. Within 24 hours, I was notified the errors were corrected.

[Sgroi135]

NJ is the same thing about free reports each year.

[Bill]

We had our information stolen in the TJX theft years ago. They gave us free automatic credit checks twice a year for 10 years.

[Orrin]

Originally Posted by purpleangel

I second that good idea!!

Don't know about other states, but in CT, everyone is entitled to a free credit report annually from each of the big three (Experion, Trans something, and Equifax). I just checked mine, and there were errors on it. I just filed an investigation (what I think they call it) with why I know these were errors. Within 24 hours, I was notified the errors were corrected.

Actually, most everyone is entitled to a free report from each of the agencies
once a year. The details are here at https://www.annualcreditreport.com/.

I use the mail option once every four months to one of the agencies. I downloaded
the request form (PDF format) and made lots of copies for the future.

[Andrea J.]

orrin
THANKS