Check your personal credit file
This will come as quite a surprise to many. It has to do with Desjardin Insurance, formerly Certas Insurance.
Anyone, I repeat, anyone who has requested an online quote from this company, be advised that they have done a credit investigation on YOU.
A quick explanation:
In September of 2008, I requested a copy of my credit file, which we should all do once a year, and noticed an inquiry from March of 2008 from Certa Web. Meant nothing to me so I did a little research and found that Certa was an insurance company I had requested an online quote from back in March as my Auto insurance was expiring the following month. I would estimate that I requested around 20 different quotes from different companies using online instant quote methods before finally deciding on a company to handle my insurance needs (not Certa).
Well I found this peculiar as in my 38 years of driving, I had never had an insurance company do a credit check and I did not remember authorizing this company to do this check even though they advise it is only a soft hit inquiry. Big deal, it was still an inquiry. Had I known I would have bypassed this company to avoid adding an inquiry to my credit file.
Now that I was angry that they had done this credit check, I call the company, now Desjardin Insurance and ask why there was a credit check on my file from them. I was told it was no big deal as it was only a soft hit (again) and that when I used their web service to obtain a quote that I was advised that they would do a credit check. I went to their current site at http://www.certas.ca to find this supposed authorization for them to do a check. The kind lady then took me on a tour of the site to find where they had spelled out this clear and precise info that I had authorized them to do the credit check.
Move all the way to the bottom of the second page after you select English or French. You will see at the bottom in very small print "Privacy"....
