Auger of Life's Information Trail

I have been caught up in the auger of life’s
computer information.

We all know that someone can take a piece
of information about us and bring up all kinds
of information about us on the computer.

We know that insurance companies, can bring
up medical information on us. Insurance
companies can bring up our driving records.
What I didn’t know was that insurance
companies, at will, without informing us,
can bring up our credit report AND judge our
insurance rates on that.

I was naive enough to think that car insurance
rates would be judged on our driving record and if
we pay our premium on time. That their quotes
would go up or down because of how we drove,
and also if we insure more than one vehicle. Also,
if you insure your home, or even life insurance would
gain you cheaper rates.

Imagine my horror as when we got our renewal
and was informed that our rates were up because
of what was on our credit report. Credit Report?
Why would our car insurance have anything to do
with credit report? And of course I shot
off a letter to the reporting credit report. After
all, we hear of credit report mistakes, even
Id theft, that goes under the radar if we don’t
do a credit report check ourselves.

I got my report back. Had to ask for a separate
one for the King as they don’t do couples, even
though, all of my credit report is showing joint
accounts. After getting both of them, I
saw just what I thought I would see. All correct,
no arrears at all. No late payments. Clear and good
report. (no numeral rating because you have to
pay $$ for that). So asked my insurance company
why the marks against our insurance. Wait until
you hear this one…

There are 14 things you have to meet to have
perfect report. We met 10 of them. We passed
all the bad ones, we got the rating of Best in this
Category. So what did we fail?

Our failure was,
1. Our credit cards were only 5
years old, they require 12 years, to be best.
2. We are using 30 -39% of the available credit
of all of our cards. The fact that we chose to
have low ceilings, and 2 of the 4 of the cards are paid
monthly. Means nothing to them. As they want
to see 10%.
3. It has been almost a year since I made a
request of credit, they prefer 18 months or none.
4, in that request I made, one request, in 24
months and they prefer none in 24 months.
I don’t understand the difference of 3 and 4, but
it makes 2 marks against us.

So if you decide to be financially responsible.
To combine your cards, to get rid of high
percentage ones. That is a mark against you.
If you decided to get an extreme low ceiling
card to use on internet. That is a mark
against you.

I am not going to say we are pure in the
insurance world. We did file one claim.
The King backed out of a parking spot
and his bumper hitch scratched deeply
into another bumper this summer.
Costing the insurance company $430.
Our only claim with this company that
we have had for 12 years. I have never
(knock on wood) had to file a claim in
my 48 years of driving. The King has only
one, 25 years ago, in his 39 years of driving.

Had they said the rates went up for this
minor fraction, we would have understood,
not happy over such a minor incident, but
understood. But to check our credit report?
We had nothing to hide, it was the principal
of the thing.

Now I got to ask, what the heck does our
credit report have to do with insuring my car?
There is a few states that this isn’t allowed.
Idaho is not one of them.
update
for those who find this hard to believe
here is a link to read. From the state
insurance department.
http://www.doi.state.id.us/consumer/credit_questions.aspx