Good afternoon everyone.  A few months ago, I wrote I Just Froze My 3 Credit Reports: Here’s Why & What I Learned.  In that post, I shared my experience placing a credit freeze on my Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion credit reports.  In today’s post, I will share my experience of temporarily lifting my credit freeze on my Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion credit reports.  Long story short, I requested a credit limit increase on one of my US Bank credit cards and got a letter in the mail stating that since my credit reports were frozen, US Bank could not process a credit limit increase.

I called US Bank and asked them which credit bureau they were trying to pull, so that I could unfreeze just that 1 credit report.  The rep said that the credit bureau that US Bank will use depends on your state and she suggested unfreezing all 3 credit reports to be safe.  I told her I would unfreeze all 3 credit reports right now and asked her to reprocess the credit limit increase request.  She said that the credit analysts would process the request in the next 3-4 business days.

I decided to temporarily lift my credit freezes for the next 7 days.  A few hours later, I received emails from Credit Karma and a few other credit monitoring service alerting me that US Bank had pulled my credit report.  Since I still had my credit reports unfrozen for 6 more days, I decided that it was time to do a mini App-O-Rama (where I apply for a few credit cards on the same day).  I will get into the details of my mini App-O-Rama in a future post, but let me show you how to temporarily lift your credit freeze with Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion.

Temporarily Lift or Permanently Remove Credit Freeze from Equifax

For Equifax, start here, then click the red Log In button, and then click the Freeze & Fraud Alerts link.

Then click the Place or Manage a Freeze button.

Then fill out the form to either temporarily lift a credit freeze (you need to enter a specific date range) or permanently remove a credit freeze.  You will need your security PIN to proceed.

After you are finished, you will see a confirmation message with details of your request.

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Temporarily Lift or Permanently Remove Credit Freeze from Experian

For Experian, start here, and click the Remove or Lift a Security Freeze button.

Then fill out the form to either temporarily lift a credit freeze (you need to enter a specific date range) or permanently remove a credit freeze.  You will need your security PIN to proceed.

After you are finished, you will see a confirmation message with details of your request.

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Temporarily Lift or Permanently Remove Credit Freeze from TransUnion

For TransUnion, start here, and click the Unfreeze button.

Then decide if you want to permanently remove a credit freeze or temporarily lift a credit freeze (you need to enter a specific date range).  You will need your security PIN to proceed.

After you are finished, you will see a confirmation message with details of your request.

Temporarily lifting all 3 credit freezes was surprisingly easy.  I finished all 3 in under 5 minutes.  Hopefully you have your security PINs saved somewhere so you can breeze through the process.  I really like the ability to have all 3 credit reports frozen all year and then specifying a date range when I want to temporarily lift a credit freeze so that I can apply for a few credit cards.  If you have any questions about temporarily lifting a credit freeze, please leave a comment below.  Have a great day everyone!