[ukie55]

It's an issue Hedrick deals with all too often: Car buyers walk into his office with an inflated sense of their creditworthiness and he has to burst their bubble.

Looks like the self-esteem garbage they teach in public schools has been effective.

Then they get out into the real world.....and reality smacks them upside the head.

[proxy_user]

What really drives them crazy is if you just write a check for the full amount.

[ArrogantBustard]

Problem is, the scores that consumers buy from the credit bureaus or heavily-promoted sites like FreeCreditReport.com or TrueCredit.com — owned by Experian and TransUnion, respectively — are not the same scores that are sold to lenders, landlords, insurers or employers...

This borders on fraud ...

[TOWER]

The whole credit score thing is a big mess. I didn’t have to deal with my credit score until I recently bought my first house. Even though my credit score was high, Experian had mixed up all of my sister’s stuff into mine (which actually made my score higher because her credit score is even better). I still fail to see how we were mixed up because we have never shared anything other than the same last name. Regardless, I could not secure a mortgage with this obvious problem on my credit. In the end, I had to PAY Experian to fix it. The whole thing is extortion pure and simple.

[meyer]

Problem is, the scores that consumers buy from the credit bureaus or heavily-promoted sites like FreeCreditReport.com or TrueCredit.com — owned by Experian and TransUnion, respectively — are not the same scores that are sold to lenders, landlords, insurers or employers.

I see this as a major problem - If I pay to have my credit score reported to me, I expect it to be accurate and I expect it to be the same score used by all parties. Otherwise, what's the value of obtaining ones' credit score.

As ArrogantBustard says, this is borderline fraud.

[kawaii]

i’m interested.

did the report the client bandied about come from the government’s ‘free credit report dot com’?

if so are the tax dollars going toward this ‘resource’ accurately reflecting someone’s credit?

[DManA]

This seems like clear cut fraud to me.

are not the same scores that are sold to lenders, landlords, insurers or employers...

[CodeToad]

It would seem to me to be fraud to sell these credit scores to consumers if no one uses the score. The fraud is that these credit score agencies say to consumers to “know your credit score” and claim creditors use the scores.

[Pistolshot]

Experian is not one I would trust to have an accurate score or do an accurate search. They seem to pull any reporting with just a first and last name, and they do not verify SS#, middle name or initial, or signature.

I've had a number of items show up on my credit report that do not belong to me, including 5 houses in places I have never been in foreclosure procedings, co-signed loans for cars, and signature loans unpaid.

All reported by Experian. None from TranUnion or Equifax.

[Obadiah]

First off, pay your bills on time and don't over extend yourself and you won't have to worry about your credit score. Second, it sure seems that people are tying their self esteem to their credit score number which is absurd. And third, the idea that a bunch of agencies can each create a non-standardized secret sauce recipe that potentially impacts your life and you aren't allowed to see it is absurd!

[snowsislander]

With the exception of the FICO score used by mortgage lenders, which consumers can purchase from Equifax or MyFico.com, Fair Isaac's consumer web site, none of these scores is available to consumers.

However, to be fair to Fair Isaac, that's a very good FICO score to have available to consumers, the one used by mortgage lenders, since this is generally the largest individual debt item that a person assumes.

[ghostrider]

Credit scores are a bunch of hooey. The individual lender should be able to review the list and make their own decision. Credit scores include medical billings, which can be very misleading. For example, assume some medical lab charges $700 for an standard lipid profile that gets rejected by the primary and secondary insurance companies as exceeding the contracted rates. The patient refuses to pay and gets turned over to the credit bureau, which turns the information over to credit ratings people. That will impact the credit score and be totally useless as an indication of credit worthiness.

[CORedneck]

Almost two years ago, I bought a new car with a 0% loan. It wasn't a bad deal. I gave a low-ball offer as well ad they accepted it as well. The funny thing, the salesman that sold me the car left two weeks later ad went back to Massachusetts from Colorado. I also had a "stain" on my credit report - an unpaid parking ticket out-of-state - California.

The ironic thing, a lot of cities/towns are chasing out of state people for unpaid parking tickets not through "official channels" such as pulling your registration but through staining your credit report.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

I don’t care if freecreditreport.com’s reports are bogus or not, their commercials are great

[SeaHawkFan]

Recently, a client came in armed with a copy of a credit report that said her score was 640. When Hedrick pulled the report, however, her score was 600. That 40-point reduction in her score meant the difference between qualifying as a prime borrower and paying 7.85% interest and being considered subprime and getting a loan at 11.64%.

The lender could be trying to scam the consumer by using the lowest of a tri-merge report. Happens all the time.

[longtermmemmory]

also a dealership BS story.

Dealers rely on “the cookie”. IOW the interest rate people are stupid enough to buy vs the interest rate they actually qualify.

The dealer is then able to pocket the difference as pure profit.

Seems either the dealer is playing games or the credit reporting of scores has a major truth in lending class action in the wings.

[Cementjungle]

When I moved to Los Angeles in ‘98 from Pennsylvania the first thing I did was do to get a new car (sold my truck in PA before moving). Someone at the Beverly Hills Infinity dealer took my Amex number from the credit application and called Amex to report the card “lost” and had a new card FedExed to them (at a different address than the new one I had just called into Amex days before). Fortunately Amex didn’t hold me responsible for the approx. $4k of charges they ran up before I discovered it.

I wasn’t too fond of that dealership, and was happy when they went belly-up.

[Lexinom]

Solution: just save the money, pay cash, and say “shove it” and “up yours” to the banks and the credit bureaus. Problem solved.