T-Mobile CallerID plus Amex promotions and Credit Reports

Well as T-Mobile continues its merger with Sprint (sad that there is one less competitor, we need more for telecom :-), they are adding a few things:

  1. Scam Saver. You download this on your phone and it is supposed to block more scams we will see.
  2. Caller Id. This caused me to look at the caller id. It turns out the default in a family account is just to use the owner of the accounts name. Even if you change the friendly names for different phone numbers, this doesn’t change caller id. How confusing is that.
  3. The solution is that you have to burrow way down into T-Mobile > Profile > Line Settings > Caller ID Name and it turns out you can even set the Caller ID of your watch and iPad. So mine is know Mickie Tong and Minnie Tong 🙂
  4. Finally make sure to set two factor authentication on your account to keep from getting slammed to some other carrier or worse! You set this in your Profile.

Don’t forget Amex deals:

  1. Then a final reminder, you can do a one time payment of $20 if you have an American Express Platinum card for your mobile and streaming service bill and Amex will reimburse you for it. Same works for Apple streaming, the $9.99 we pay for Apple Music works and there is another $10 we can use for things like Disney channel etc.
  2. There are lots of thing beyond core Netflix (which you should get as part of your T-Mobile subscription, it’s basically $9.99 for free) and Amazon Prime Video (which you get with Amazon Prime). Beyond that for kids, Disney is nice, but looking at the other services, if you have Comcast you get to watch commercials with their streaming system or with Hulu. I definitely do not love commercials. Showtime is $10 and HBO Now is $15, so those are options too.
  3. And every six months you get a $50 discount at Saks which you can stack with their 10% off if you subscribe to their newsletter.

Then finally while we are living in hibernation

  1. It’s never a bad time to turn on CreditKarma to see how your credit is looking these days. While everyone provides credit reports, they are good about letting you see so much more of it from both Equifax and TransUnion.
  2. So if you see something suspicious, you should request a credit report so you can be sure and there is a free website for this handily named annualcreditreport.com/ and these are free through April 2021.
  3. This site really just links to the big three and has a heart attack if you try to dispute something in TransUnion.
  4. The problem is that TransUnion has two different password systems. There is one for TransUnion in general and then a separate system for https://service.transunion.com which houses the credit freeze and dispute engine. They actually have made it pretty easy to dispute addresses and phone numbers and employers that sneak on there.
  5. Similarly Equifax has no less than three different login systems with one being Econsumer.equifax.com and this looks like it is from 1999 and is just for paid service, so you should use MyEquifax instead. As an aside, you can see that freeze.equifax.com is a completely different site. Totally different look and feel. You can also use this site to put a fraud alert on your account. The Fraud alert is free for one year and asks if you could be a victim. That’s pretty crazy, just about everyone is a potential victim given all the breaches over the years. They let you have six free credit reports a year which is pretty great! And the dispute thing is also right there. I couldn’t figure out a way to print the Equifax however, so you may want to screen capture it.
  6. Experian is the sleaziest of all they want you pay for a Credit Lock, but they on a completely different site offer the Freeze which is free but has a separate login and password. And printing is really hard to do but you want to because the on screen is early minimal in information.

I’m Rich & Co.

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