Freezing LexisNexis can affect ChexSystems approvals

[RocketGoBoom]

Just an FYI on my personal experience.

 

About two years ago I received my complete LexisNexis consumer file. It was 100+ pages and had stuff going back 25 years. There was nothing negative on there. I just found it sort of creepy that there was a file out there with so much history on it. 

 

So I just froze the LexisNexis consumer file (per the FCRA freeze option). LexisNexis sent me a letter with a PIN code. Luckily I saved that letter.

 

So fast forward to about a year ago. I applied for a membership at a credit union. They pulled ChexSystems and I was denied because they said my ChexSystem report was frozen. It was NOT frozen, but that is how it appeared to the credit union. I requested a copy of my ChexSystems file and called ChexSystems. Chex confirmed my file is NOT frozen, but there is a small section of the file that contains data from LexisNexis. There was a note in my ChexSystems report that LN data is frozen and unavailable. This was the reason the credit union would not approve me for membership.

 

I wrote it off and moved on. I didn't need the credit union. It was just a nice to have thing.

 

So about a month ago I applied for a different credit union and the exact same thing happened. I found the old letter from LexisNexis with my PIN code and sent LN a letter asking for the freeze to be removed. It took about a week, I confirmed it with a phone call to LN customer service. Then I immediately applied again to the same credit union for membership. I was approved right away.

 

Moral of the story, be careful about freezing your LexisNexis consumer file. It will mess up your ChexSystems file and possibly prevent you from getting a bank account. My examples were with two credit unions. Not sure if there is something special about credit unions. I did not test this scenario with a normal bank.

[tmcgill]

Thanks for the post!

Each bank or credit union sets their own approval criteria when the info is pulled. But yes, an LN file can affect bank acct. approvals. The LN portion is used for ID verification. I helped someone out a few months ago with a decline from Schwab. His Chex was clean but LN had him confused with his son (same name - jr. and sr.)

Always good to include a free LN pull when checking the big 3. 

(So many CRAs - so little time)

[Debtfree2019]

How do you unfreeze LexisNexis and the fastest way to do it?

[tmcgill]

Other than contacting them directly, I don't know another faster way.

https://personalreports.lexisnexis.com/fcra_consumer.jsp

 

-BUMP-