I am looking for some assistance with handling of a credit freeze message on a credit bureau report. Are credit freezes to be handling in the same manner as a fraud alert or active duty alert? For example, if a telephone number is included on the report, should the creditor call the number listed to confirm identity and request the credit freeze be lifted in order to complete the application process? The current process is to send an NOAA stating credit is frozen and we are unable to process the application. Additionally the NOAA includes CRA contact information.

Thank you.

Only the customer can lift the freeze - continue what you are doing. They need to contact the credit bureau, with their assigned PIN, and lift the freeze either permanently or temporarily and then let you know. It is not really your problem.

If a credit freeze or consumer alert is present on one bureau we obtain (for example, Transunion), stating we should call the consumer....but a second bureau from another CRA (for example, Experian) obtained at the same time, does not include the same credit freeze/consumer alert. Must we address/clear the consumer alert, or can we say we "relied on/used" the bureau that didn't contain the freeze/alert?

I believe there is an underlying assumption that if we obtained multiple credit reports, they are all relied in our credit decision (whether we used them all or not), and thus, we'd need to contact the customer to address the alert or lift the freeze, even if it is only on one of the bureaus we obtained. Your thoughts?

If we pull a Equifax report and there is an alert in the file that their Experian file has been frozen we treat that as red flag (fraud notice if you will) and it must be cleared before proceeding.

The freeze is to put the lender on alert that there could be potential fraud so why would you not want to clear it?