Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 3 Sep 2015.<\/p>\n
Recently I\u2019ve been ranting about the problem of looking for a record that never existed or once existed and has since vanished.\u00a0 Today, I\u2019m going to share a frustrating story about trying to correct an error in a record.<\/p>\n
As genealogists we know that it\u2019s common to find discrepancies in records.\u00a0 One census may show a person born in one year and the next census may show a different birth year.\u00a0 A marriage record may state a person was born in one state but the census record may show a different state.\u00a0 We know it\u2019s a best practice to try to find primary sources but sometimes even a primary source isn\u2019t correct and it becomes a herculean task to try to fix the error.<\/p>\n
Daughter recently moved and was trying to have her power turned on.\u00a0 Power company told her they couldn\u2019t do it because she had a discrepancy in her birthdate through one of the credit services they used.\u00a0 She called the credit service (and I use the term service loosely!) and they refused to tell her which company had reported her birthdate wrong.\u00a0 She was told to fax 2 of the following 3 documents to the credit card company to prove her correct date of birth:\u00a0 a birth certificate, driver\u2019s license, passport, or social security card.\u00a0 Since daughter didn\u2019t have power she couldn\u2019t fax the documents (duh) so she took a picture of them on her phone and emailed them to me to fax.<\/p>\n
Immediately I thought this was a scam but I checked and found that the number she was supposed to fax to was legitimate and lots of other people have encountered the same problem.\u00a0 I faxed and got confirmation that the documents were sent.\u00a0 Daughter called the power company back and informed them the information had been faxed but it could be 10 days before the situation was investigated.\u00a0 Power company turned on the power (hooray!).<\/p>\n
A few weeks later daughter received via US mail a letter from the credit service stating she had to refax the documents as they were not readable.\u00a0 Daughter refaxed and then sent a hard copy via US Mail.\u00a0 Another few weeks went by and daughter received another document from the credit service in the mail stating they had re-investigated and would update the record if she sent them either a birth certificate or driver\u2019s license.\u00a0 This will be the fourth time they received copies of those documents.\u00a0 Frustrated, daughter again tried to find out which record was in error so she could go directly to the source to get it corrected.\u00a0 Although it is her credit record, the credit service again refused to divulge the information.\u00a0 Daughter contacted her bank and credit card companies to see if they had the birthdate wrong.\u00a0 Nope, their records were correct.\u00a0 So, for the fourth time, daughter resent proof of her birthdate.<\/p>\n
I’ve noticed when looking at US Public Records Index that too many individuals have conflicting birthdates in comparison to my other sources. \u00a0I don’t know if you’ve notice this, too, but I’m guessing there must be a date of birth field where someone is entering the digit 1 instead of the actual date of birth. \u00a0Since the month and year are correct, I don’t know if all the fields must be complete and if they don’t have the day of birth they enter a 1. \u00a0No way to correct the error, either!<\/p>\n
It’s important to remember that clearly, even today, record accuracy isn’t going to happen 100% of the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 3 Sep 2015. Recently I\u2019ve been ranting about the problem of looking for a record that never existed or once existed and has since vanished.\u00a0 Today, I\u2019m going to share a frustrating story about trying to correct an error in a record. As genealogists we know that it\u2019s common to … Continue reading “Correcting Records Is A Feat!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[155],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brick-walls","tag-credit-error"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":177,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions\/177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}