Furious

Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree of Contrast.

I am fit to be tied, and not in a fun way either. I am so freaking pissed.

Instead of  doing  anything  fun  tonight,  I  decide  to wrap up one last project and check on my tax refund…still MIA. Meanwhile, I download my 2006 edition of my tax software while I’m  waiting and see right away that I’ve overpaid for 2006 and I’ll want to get my taxes done as soon as possible this year. No waiting to file an extension because I’m too busy.

In the middle of that, I get some idiot teenagers who want to play peeping tom and bang on my windows. Not a good idea when I’m doing taxes. The police are already ahead of me by the time I lose the boys in  the dark. I don’t chase anybody with a sword this time, though. Or my skull staff. I’m annoyed but okay.

But while  I’m  in the  taxing  mood,  I might  as well make sure the Discover  Card folks, whom I seldom use but like to  have handy for emergencies, didn’t mess up my Damned  Near Perfect  Credit Score I’ve worked  so hard to have. Last year, Discover  had a computer  glitch that canceled  a payment  and billed me a late fee. I gave them evidence to the contrary and got it reversed, with their  apologies.  Six  months  later,  the  same  thing  happened again and they couldn’t  explain but they fixed it again, with more apologies. I wanted to make sure it hadn’t messed up my score—and I wanted to see how much paying off my roof back in the mid-autumn had caused my score to go up, since the roof purchase had caused a small drop.

I am shocked  to find that my Damned  Near Perfect Credit Score  had  dropped  significantly  and  even  more shocked to see  the amount of debt listed. I pay off my credit cards every month. I have a mortgage that’s significantly less than my home’s value. I have a $200 a month car payment at too good a rate to pay off and it’s almost done. I have no other debt and none from my marriage. This is not my stuff. And paying off the roof blipped it up only a point or two. WTF????

I go to order my credit report online, give my info and pay for the report because I’m not waiting for the freebie and it’s a weekend and I  want it now. After I’ve paid, I can’t get access to it because I can’t give them the proper info to prove who I am…because they’re not accepting the name of my employer for the last 19 years, 9 months, and 27 days as mine and they’re  not accepting my home address where I’ve been since 17 October 1993 as mine. No. The addresses I have a choice of are ones where my ex  has  lived  since  he  moved  out.  They’ve  merged  his info—and  who  knows  what  else  or  who  else’s—with mine. I can’t even get into my online  credit report because it has his info instead of mine.

Between this and my insurance company sending him my privacy act info last month and not being able to explain why or how to me, something’s really effed up. And I’m also listed online in a several people-finder  places as being  at  his address  when  I’ve  never  even  crossed  the threshold.

And of course, it’s a Friday night on a long weekend and there’s nothing I can do until Tuesday but sit here and scream at my credit score blinking on the computer.

It’s a good thing I’ll be playing with the chainsaw tomorrow.