There are many things in this world that I find preposterous, and among them is credit scores. At least in the way that we seem to organize them, it's amazing if they're anything close to accurate. And three massive companies have the luxury of playing gatekeeper to this flawed data, and charging massive amounts of money to access it, use it, or change it. Where can I sign up for that gig?

For my age, I have a long and unpleasant financial history inherited partially from my parents. It's a long story, but I basically started my financial life with the black mark of a bankruptcy right on top of my account list. It shouldn't have been there, but it probably worked in my favor over the long run.

That fell off some years ago, finally, but it seems like there's always some unpleasant and incorrect element chasing me. The latest was an entry from Cox Communications. They claimed I defaulted on a debt of $212 for which the sent a collections agency after me. They did send a collections agency after me; of course the debt was something I never knew about, and to this day don't believe I owed, but how do you convince them of that? I paid it and it still shows up as a mark.

Anyway, I got home from work a bit ago and found two pieces of mail from Discover Card waiting in my mailbox. Discover used to send me all sorts of credit card offers in the mail and then reject any application I sent in, which infuriated me and led me to declare that I would never ever use a Discover Card even if they'd give me one. But I was curious what the offers were nowadays, so I opened them up.

They're not the same offer. One of them is for a platinum card with 0% apr on balance transfers until it's paid off. (Hmm, can you pay off student loans with a credit card??) The other is for a platinum card with a much higher rate, no balance transfer options, and a lower limit.

I finally looked at the front and I see that one of them is addressed to “A. H.,” and the other to “W. A. H.” That's what I get for using my middle name as a first name, but how fantastic that my two pseudonyms with the same social security number have different credit scores.