Roxanne Suson, a Brookfield native and graduate of Brookfield East High School, provides readers with an eclectic mix of topics. Once a trial attorney, now a full-time mom, Roxanne blogs about the happiness, sadness, and absurdity of life and family in the suburbs.
As the title of my blog indicates, I am just a Brookfield Wannabe. Living in Pewaukee and through no choice of my own, I have one of those wacky coordinate addresses, the kind that screws up computer systems, confuses out-of-state customer service reps, and generally is too long to fit into the street number section of most forms. I am not sure why these kinds of addresses are still in use. It's not like Pewaukee is in the middle of Alaska or something. Normally, despite the extra time it takes to explain/write down my overly long address, my coordinate address isn't a problem, but recently when I was trying to deal with a potential identity theft problem, my @#$&! address was making me pull my hair out.
Without going into too much detail about how it was done, my husband and I had reason to believe that sensitive information about both of us, including our social security numbers and bank account information, had been compromised. It was done in a way that was disturbing and over which we had little control. Upon discovering the breach, I began to panic, and I am not a person who usually does that -- obsesses, yes; panicks, no. I was paralyzed by the sheer enormity of what I would need to do. Although my husband promised he would help, let's face it. I am the stay-at-home mom, and my husband has the kind of job where other people depend on him to come in. He also doesn't sit at a desk all day where he would be available by phone or to make calls. So, I knew the bulk of the work would fall on me. So, I think I was entitled to a moment of extended panic. After I stopped hyperventilating, my obsessive nature took over, and I became ... PISSED.
Luckily (if that word can be applied in this context), we knew that the breach had only occurred within the last day or two, but we discovered it after the end of a normal business day. Still, I knew we had to act quickly to shut the problem down. So at 10:00 in the evening, my first call was to the 24-hour customer service line of our bank. After determining that no unauthorized withdrawals were made and upon the advice of an extremely helpful customer service rep, I put a complete freeze on our accounts, until I could get to the bank the next day to change all the account numbers. The next step was to contact the 3 major credit bureaus, TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax, and that my friends was where the problems began.
Finding phone numbers for the three bureaus was easy enough. My husband and I googled "identity theft" and were able to find phone numbers through which we could place an "initial fraud alert." Various websites informed us that contacting one bureau would be sufficient because that company would pass on the alert to the remaining two. The first problem we encountered was that we would have to act separately in placing the alert because even though my husband and I are linked till death do us part, our credit reports are not.
I dialed first and, of course, got an automated system which, you guessed it, asked me for the "number" of my street address. The prompt stated that for post office boxes the caller should just enter the number. So, I tried to do that with the numbers on my address. Keep in mind that the system had already asked for my social security number. The system then stated that it was unable to access my credit report based on the information I inputted and therefore, I would need to make copies of my sensitive information and mail it to them so that they could verify my information and then place the fraud alert on my credit report. Okay, so they want me to make copies of sensitive information and put it in the mail addressed to a P.O. Box? Does that not seem wrong to you? Not to mention that the alert would not be placed on my report for several days. Muttering an oath, I tried to call again, thinking that I might be able to talk to an actual person. After sitting through the various prompts twice without inputting anything, the system cut me off. My husband tried to call bureau #2. Same thing. After trying to enter in our address number, he got the same message that they could not verify his information. Then, a call to bureau number #3. No dice. At this point, I was about ready to throw the phone through the wall and was convinced that by the time we were able to get a fraud alert placed, our FICO numbers would be shot to hell.
The next day, I called the local police, was interviewed by a police officer at my home, filled out a police report, went to the bank, closed down all our bank accounts, and opened new ones. Did I mention that I also had to get my daughter ready for school, get her to school, and then pick her up again too? All I can say is that the customer service manager at my bank was a godsend. She went out of her way, literally, to make sure everything got taken care of in the proper way, and when I say literally, I mean she drove out to my husband's office in
