Pic Sara took of our plane on descent

As eccentric crazies in this travel game we’re typically organized (to some degree).  We use tools like AwardWallet to track our points and miles, KVSTool and ExpertFlyer to make sure we’re getting the most from those miles, and CreditSesame, CreditKarma, and Quizzle as a free way to keep track of our credit scores.

Our families give us weird looks, but its ok … they’ll happily reap the benefits from our crazy.  It works until you forget about someone.  Someone that missed United 1K by 1500 EQM, or someone that has never had a credit card … and is a victim of identity theft.  The former was fixed with a quick discussion and education of all of the benefits they were missing out; rest assured she’s made United 1K three years straight now … the latter, is my current challenge.  Here goes …

Last week and this week I’m working from home (yay!)   Sara is out on the road and I’m home with our pup.  Last weekend I had an uneventful flight up to Massachusetts to see family and friends (I hadn’t been in almost a year) and stayed at my parents.  We opted Saturday night to head out to some fine international cuisine at The Olive Garden (insert laughs).

View from our seats at altitude

My brother told stories of his three month trip to Japan (I sent him over using 50k AA miles in business class on JAL flight 1 & 2 using a promo they had in the fall), and my mother chimed in saying she wanted a credit card to get her 50k points.  Last year I got her and my stepfather 30k SPG each and they’re hooked.

The plan when we got home was to pull credit for my mom, stepfather (who was convinced his score was higher than my mothers), and two younger brothers.  My mom, stepfather, and youngest brother were all fine.  My other brother has no checking account, no credit cards, and no debt … here come the problems.

Our first attempt to get a credit score was through CreditSesame, but they were unable to retrieve a report.  CreditKarma asked a bunch of questions that made no sense in the verification process and we couldn’t figure it out (I bet you can figure out where this is going …), and Quizzle was much the same.

The final thing was to go to TrueCredit and do a pull from there.  Much of the same and in the end we can only get the report mailed to us at an address that we’ve never seen before … yup, he’s a victim of identity theft.

To add insult to injury, my brother suffers from a mental disability.  Each of these calls to different credit agencies, and visit to the police department will have someone else in the family having to verify their identity.  Hopefully we’ll have some progress within the week.  I’ll be posting a full update along with all the steps we’re taking to get through this and resources we’re using.

About a decade ago the same thing happened to my mother, except it was much easier for her to get to the bottom of it all as she had an established record.  Apparently lightning can strike twice to a family.