Credit score

[Baker]

I went to annualcreditreport.com and obtained my credit report free from all of the three major players. All of them are free for the basic credit report. If you want to get your exact credit score, you have to pay for that. I guess the law states your credit report is free, not your credit score.

Yeah, that's correct. I believe the law was written in 1996, and credit scores weren't in vogue at the time (well, they were, but consumers didn't know about them, heheh)

[Solecord]

I went to annualcreditreport.com and obtained my credit report free from all of the three major players. All of them are free for the basic credit report. If you want to get your exact credit score, you have to pay for that. I guess the law states your credit report is free, not your credit score.

[Grim]

Why wouldn't you just go to the three major ones and pull from there? Why is anyone looking at a second party to get these reports?

Well, correct me if I'm wrong. At Equifax you have to pay for this information.

According to annualcreditreport.com, it's free. FAQ on that site

Now I got to the area where they want my information. I stop there so I cannot tell you if they will charge me or not.

[Net-Tyme]

Why wouldn't you just go to the three major ones and pull from there? Why is anyone looking at a second party to get these reports? Only asking because my coworker did that and failed to click on an opt out feature. She just clicked next. Then found a charge hit her card the following month. I went to the major 3 to get mine. I don't get the point of going to a second party when you should go to the source to begin with.

Sorry Baker, had to walk away from the start of this thread. I've been in credit to long to discuss that particular law mentioned. Just letting you know.. I didn't back down.. I backed out.

[Grim]

Here it is right off the front page.



Notice toward the bottom. kbdrate's post reflects the free report.

[Baker]

Free = no strings attached

Since freecreditreport.com apparently requires a credit card and signing up for a trial of something no one is likely looking for, it is not free.

Since it is not actually free with no strings attached, I don't think the name is really appropriate.

On the other hand, it would hard for them to verify identity without a credit card or something to verify it is really you.

[Grim]

Google for freecreditreport.com and read what people have to say, I can't recall the specifics.

This is my take on them. You see "free credit report!". Once apon a time I went to the site and started to go through it to get the report. When I got to the point where it wanted to charge my credit card, I just left it alone.

If you sign up, you can get a month free! That's your free credit report. Like kbdrate stated, you have to sign up for one of their $$$ packages. Bleh, I don't need them. I was only curious anyway.

[kbdrate]

If I recall correctly, freecreditreport.com is run by one of the credit reporting agencies and is a scam to charge you $$$ for what you are entitled to get for free.

I don't know who owns it but it's not really a scam. It is very silly to use that website because you can get your credit report for free anyway.

You can request a free credit report at once per year through the real site www.annualcreditreport.com (or by snail mail).

If freecreditreport.com is legitimate, where are they getting all of this money for radio advertising?

They do TV ads as well. If you look at the fine print, you have to sign up for one of their $$$ packages in order to get the "free" credit report. It includes other services which are probably equally as useless.

They want to be the middleman that provides free services to you for money. It's the same deal with weather reports. There are companies out there that charge $$$$ for free information the government produces. Useless middlemen.

And in the case of weather, they aren't just useless but actually hurt you. They wanted to stop the government from producing XML reports. They wanted to lock up the data in a proprietary format. That's just disgusting to lock up taxpayer funded information in a proprietary format so they have a business model.

[Baker]

Google for freecreditreport.com and read what people have to say, I can't recall the specifics.

See, the main tip off that it is a scam is that the credit reporting companies are required by law to provide a free credit report: http://www.annualcreditreport.com/ <--- legitimate site

If I recall correctly, freecreditreport.com is run by one of the credit reporting agencies and is a scam to charge you $$$ for what you are entitled to get for free.

If freecreditreport.com is legitimate, where are they getting all of this money for radio advertising?

[Solecord]

Someone mentioned that freecreditreport . com is a scam - how so? I've never used it... just wondering...

[Baker]

It is funny because this works the opposite of the way that you would think it should work. It is one of the many upside-down things about credit industry.

And like you said earlier, the credit scoring system is dumb. I've heard someone describe it as "a good predictor of the present", heheh.

Credit scores are popular because

1. they are a simple number
2. Banks screw up their internal credit adjudication processes because they don't know what they are doing
3. The Board of Directors at a bank says "Hey, we can buy these scores for 15 cents each and do graphs!"

Credit scores are the most arbitrary and stupid thing ever invented (a 750 credit score can be a 590 in 3 months, and people with 800 credit scores go bankrupt all the time). They ought to just go by whether or not your pay the bills or not.

It gets even WORSE with internal bank scoring systems, which are barely audited and they write it themselves --- and with any bank that isn't one of the 6 or 7 largest, they don't have enough smart people to do a quality job of it --- and ridiculous things can get factored in.

The thing scariest about banks writing their own scoring systems is that they do not have statistical analysts using data to determine statistically meaningful relationships, they use "human judgement".

Which is why when someone with perfect credit gets a retarded decline letter and the person has a 750 credit score, it's the bank's internal procedures.

It's truly retarded, heheh.

[Baker]

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act was passed in 1974 with the aim of helping married women, especially those who did not work outside the home, establish credit in their own names. Under the Act, a creditor that furnishes information to credit bureaus must report account information for both spouses on joint credit accounts and on accounts where a spouse is an authorized user.

And due to the Equal Credit Opportunity Act ... lenders are not allowed to discriminate based on martial status. The best way for a bank to avoid being sued under the ECOA is to never ask for your marital status because then "they don't know" and therefore can't discriminate (or have an employee screw up).

They are required by law to report authorized user accounts for spouses, yet they don't ask if you are married or the relationship between card holders.

So they report ALL authorized users, and there is no law against that.

Not all credit card companies report all authorized users, but the exceptions to the rule are few and far between. As a general rule of thumb, any large bank generally reports them all (Discover, Chase, Citibank, etc.)

[Net-Tyme]

"Not all credit card companies report account information on all authorized users to credit bureaus. For example, MBNA America only reports account information if an authorized user is a spouse."

In this same aspect they woudln't be reporting the good rating for that "authorized" user either.



"Guilty by association
Even though you never applied for the card and you're not responsible for the card's payment, the card account and its payment history may still be recorded "

Apparently there are some cards that allow you do do this although no all. So It seems to be up to the card.

[Baker]

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/cc/...sp?prodtype=cc

Guilty by association
Even though you never applied for the card and you're not responsible for the card's payment, the card account and its payment history may still be recorded on your credit report. Once there, the account will carry just as much weight as a card account opened in your own name.

Being an authorized user on a well-managed account with a long payment history could boost your credit rating. But if the account goes unpaid, your credit score could take some serious hits.

[Baker]

To my knowledge this only effects the original users credit and has nothing to do with the "Authorized" user. At least not here.