Damaged credit from a wedding where I was not the bride
Jul 25, 2024 3:30 pm
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In my financial journey, I spent a lot of time on investments and savings and the like. My actual credit profile was not part of my day to day awareness in financial planning. Then my son was born in 2010 with a hole in his heart and the medical bills piled up. When it was time to get a loan in 2016, my credit report was pulled and it was 62 pages long. Like a book. I was in shock. I never knew the detailed level of information that the two credit bureaus in Jamaica had on me. I had to create a plan get control of my financial life. First thing I did was learn to become a better investor. Second thing I did was develop relationships with even better investors to guide me. So I believed I was on the way to getting from under the massive medical debts. Then, in 2018, a banker called me to say that there was some unusual activities on my credit card and I should visit the branch.
A one year fight over my credit card used on a wedding where I was not the bride????
So already burdened by medical bills and other debts, I went to the bank with a heavy heart. However, I did not expect to hear what I heard. It was remarked that I had clearly overspent on my wedding. “What wedding?”, I asked the banker. Apparently, someone got access to my credit card and went to a wedding dress boutique, a wedding centre for the nuptials, a supermarket, a gas station and a high end North Coast hotel in the course of three days. It took me ONE YEAR to dispute all the errors on my credit card!!! Actually, the fraud wedding was actually a blessing in disguise. Because as I went through my credit card statements, I realised that in some cases, I was billed twice and payments were not recorded or recorded the day after due date which I disputed to reduce my fees and interest charges. But the fun did not stop there. After the one year fight to get my credit card bill down, I then was still denied a loan from a different financial institution. Why? Because Jamaica is under a credit reporting regime. That means, any issue you have with one bank is the information shared with all banks. So, then I had to go on the journey to get my credit report cleaned up.
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