I called my friend Tessa that evening. Tessa is thirty-three, practical in the way that some people are just constitutionally practical, the kind of friend who responds to a crisis by immediately asking what the next step is. She is not a lawyer. She did not give me legal advice. But she listened to me go through everything and at the end she said: “Erin, you need to talk to the lender before you do anything else. Get their documentation. Get actual information before you try to figure out what to do with it.”
That was good advice. I took it.
## Calling the Lender
Finding the correct contact information for the lender was my first task. I did not use the number in the credit alert email, because Tessa had also said — practically, sensibly — that phishing schemes exist and the right move was to find the lender’s information independently and call that.
I found the lender’s main number through their official website. I called. I explained that I was seeing an account on my credit report that I did not recognize and that I wanted to understand what documentation existed.
The representative was professional and careful. She verified my identity in the ways that lenders verify identity — my Social Security number, my date of birth, security questions — and then she confirmed that the account existed in my name. She could not tell me everything over the phone, but she could confirm that a dispute process existed, that I could initiate it, and that the process would involve me submitting documentation and the lender conducting an investigation.