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Transunion is charging to place a credit freeze on your file. The charges to add, lift, or remove a credit freeze vary by state and can be found here. Some states even have differing charges based on your age. Here’s an idea. Make them free…But if they were free, it would hurt TransUnion’s business model.  We wouldn’t want to hurt a credit reporting agency’s business model in an effort to help consumers against fraud, would we?

Okay, so this doesn’t improve your score directly, but there are benefits. Freezing your credit report with Experian will keep your Experian score from going down due to hard inquiries when applying for credit.

So, you want to apply for some credit cards, or otherwise initiate a bunch of hard pulls on your credit report, but are worried about the consequences of hard inquiries staying on your credit report or a dip on your FICO score. You already know about bumpage, accelerated bumpage, and choppage, so you’re not too worried about your Equifax or Transunion scores being hurt. What about your Experian score? (Remember, bumpage doesn’t work with Experian.) Just freeze your credit report with Experian. The hard pull that would otherwise be on Experian will likely redirected to a different credit reporting agency (CRA) – either Transunion or Equifax. The risk being run is that the institution trying to pull the Experian report will decide not to pull from a CRA, and a denial letter will be sent. I’m not too worried about getting denied credit – if my score stays in tact. Don’t forget, if you really want to, you can “thaw” your credit report temporarily, or remove the freeze altogether.

Clark Howard has a good guide on freezing your credit report with links to the various CRA’s websites. The cost is $3-$10 per bureau to freeze, and a cost to thaw per bureau of $0-$10.

If you’re already using the ‘bumping‘ strategy of pulling your credit report regularly to eliminate hard inquiries, then you may have noticed this process takes a LONG time. It can take three months to see any results from pulling your credit report once a day.

Why not pull several times a day? All it takes is using multiple services to pull your credit score daily, and you can bump your hard inquiries in a fraction of the time. Here is a list of credit monitoring services that allow daily pulls:

• Service…………………………………………………..Pulls from………………………….Cost
• National City Identity Protect ………………..(Pulls all 3 bureaus)……………..$9/month
• Credit Karma ………………………………………(Pulls Trans Union only)………..Free
• Privacy Matters 123 …………………………….(Pulls all 3 bureaus)………………$30/year
• Truecredit ………………………………………….(Pulls all 3 bureaus)……………..$15/month

This list is not comprehensive, and is subject to change, but you get the idea, for about $55, you can remove hard inquiries from your credit report in 30 days or less.  Again, this does not work with Experian, but does work with Trans Union and Equifax.

Viva la bumpage.

A few days ago, when I was talking about bumping hard inquiries off your credit report, I mentioned choppage. Choppage is when soft inquiries are cut off of your credit report (usually in a large block). The soft inquiries are good, because they fill the spaces of your hard inquiries. So, you can see why choppage can harm your efforts to bump hard inquiries.

Choppage typically happens when there is a long line of identical pulls on your credit report. So, if you’ve been using national city, like mentioned in the bumpage post, and you have 60 days worth of pulls with nothing in between, your credit file may get chopped.

One potential way to avoid a chopped credit profile (and speed up the bumping process) is to pull from a few sources. CreditKarma pulls Trans Union, you can update daily, and best of all, its free. Truecredit.com allows daily pulls (all 3 bureaus), and is $15/month. Privacymatters123 allows daily pulls (all 3 bureaus), and is $30/year.

Probably the best way to avoid choppage is to take a break from pulling your credit report every once in a while.