Bank of America shouldn't mess with its customers credit report

I think the relevant term here is "I logged on to my online Bank of America Account today." He's an existing customer. Whether he was an existing CC customer or some other kind of customer is not known. And I guess we'll never know, because it looks like the OP never responded to this thread again.

Another option is this:

This is the site that resulted from a federal law that allows you to get a free credit report every year. You do not have to sign up for anything else to get your report. You don't have to sign up for a limited-time free trial, after which you will be charged, etc etc. It is absolutely free and you get free reports from the three major credit-reporting agencies. However.....

1) This will not give you a credit score. You can sign up to pay extra to get a credit score, but it is not free. But at least the free reports will show you the inquiries made about you.

2) As you go through the process with each of the agencies, they will try to get you to sign up for services that cost you money. All you have to remember, though, is to not sign up for anything that costs you money (unless you want to). At the end of the process, you will still be able to get your FREE credit reports.

Just remember, it's free. I've been through the process twice and managed to get reports from all three bureaus for NO COST. (I did pay an extra few bucks once to see a credit score, but that was my option).

You certainly win the creative snipping award for your efforts, but you are STILL misrepresenting the original post, which was as follows:

\ :I logged on to my online Bank of America Account today and discovered I :had a Power Rewards Visa Acct today. I didn't apply for one and didn't :ask for one. It showed a credit limit of $7500. This tells me my credit :report has a new entry in it showing I applied for such credit. This :upsets me! BofA should mess around with its customer credit report. It :shouldn't create unwanted accounts for its customers.

Note the words "discovered I had a Power Rewards Visa Acct today. I didn't apply for one and didn't :ask for one. It showed a credit limit of $7500. This tells me my credit report has a new entry in it showing I applied for such credit."

Yes, you are correct, I misremembered the OP. I thought that since he said he was an existing BofA customer, I assumed he already had a credit card with them. He might, but nothing in the OP says that. Where I live, there are no BofA banks that I know of. To me, the company is more of a credit card company than a bank because I don't know of any walk-in branches here with tellers etc (New Orleans-area). We have Chase banks and even Capital One banks (they bought a regional banking firm here), but no BofA banks. Hence my incorrect assumptions regarding the OP.

If this is the same site I'm thinking about I didn't have to "go through the process with each of the agencies," however I've only done it once and right after the program was first started. I just downloaded a form on that site, filled it out, and put it on top of the refrigerator until 6 months had passed and my area of the country was eligible for the three free credit reports (which all eventually arrived).

I think it has improved some since then. You don't have to download a form; you just do it all online. Your report shows up online and you can print it out. Nothing needs to be mailed out and nothing is returned to you by mail. Some of the agencies (but I don't think all three) give you the option of returning to that site to view the same report in the next 30 days for free. The report is in effect frozen for viewing. For example, if you go back to look at the report 29 days later, it won't show any intervening activity. And you don't have to do all three agencies when you look for reports. You can pick one or two. When you finish with one agency, it kicks you back to the home page where you can choose to go to another of the three agencies.

It's a shame that there are other sites out there with similar names that are not really free at all. What they do is offer a free credit report if you sign up with their credit-monitoring service. For example there is one out there (and I'm writing this name so that it does NOT show up as a link) called freecreditreport(--dot--)com. I'm pretty sure that's one of the sites that is not actually free at all.

I don't think this is necessarily an improvement, I'd just as soon send in a form and receive three hard copies of the reports through the mail. I guess the new way is easier on the credit agencies themselves though.

What's the advantage to that over just printing them out?

(BTW: I'm a Dennis, too.)