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     | Thursday, January 20, 2000 - 09:28 am  My wife and I recently spoke to a mortgage broker called from a real estate office. This guy pulled a merged credit report from a company that puts the 3 major CRA's into one. Is this a credit report? All 3 CRA's gave us a risk score, all but two, below 600. The back page of this merged report was a summary, listing among other totals, a total high credit limit of $3,246,624.00 and a balance monthy owed of $42,414.00. Does anyone know the effect of this information on our risk scores? As some of you know, I sued Equifax once. This mortgage broker told us we could not qualify for a mortgage, we needed a risk score of at least 620. Our scores were: 523,564; 456,605; 543, and 623. We have bad credit to say the least, but after reading all the posts here, and our experience in court, I'm kind of stumped as to where to even start with this, you see, my wife is a housewife, and I didn't even make $42,414.00 last year total, and that's what this says we have as a monthly payment!
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| | Thursday, January 20, 2000 - 10:05 am More than likely, yes. It's a merged residential credit report. The scores are purchased by the lender/broker and are used to determine your creditworthiness risk (or at least that's what the industry claims ... :) ). Sounds like you've got some serious erroneous information on your reports. $3.2 million in total credit limit on a $42k/year salary? I'd say you're the "Credit Reporting Works 4 U" poster child ... :) Did you obtain a copy of the reports? If not, get one from each of the bureaus (if you've been denied credit, you get a copy for free). Maybe the mortgage officer will be nice enough to give you a copy. But in your case, I'd want to know what all three bureaus' reports looked like (information can be different depending upon the bureau reporting), not just the merged report. The only way to see what's adding up to 3.2 million in limits and 42k in monthly payments is to look on your reports.
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| | Sunday, January 23, 2000 - 07:17 am Gary: See http://www.ftc.gov/os/1999/9908/faresletterfinal.htm The FTC states, "Finally, the Commission wishes to use this opportunity to clarify its interpretation of section 623(b) of the FCRA. The Commission believes that section 623 requires that a creditor or other information provider that receives a notice of dispute from a reseller must investigate the item or items in dispute just as it must investigate a notice of dispute from one of the repositories." The bottom line is that somebody is not telling the truth about you. So the usual finger-pointing ensues by: the reseller ("a company that puts the 3 major CRA's into one," but issues their report about you), one or more of the three national credit reporting agency or agencies storing the information, and the original creditor who reported the information to the national CRAs. I still think you should follow rcb's advice and get your reports directly from the national CRAs, however, it is indeed your right to demand that the reseller correct the information they disseminated. They are just as guilty of passing false information. Write to them, write to the nationals, and write to the creditors. Tell them all you don't care who is at fault, but if your report isn't corrected within the time period they are allotted by the FCRA, you will exercise you options thereunder. Is that a ridiculous amount of work for you to have to go through to help those telling falsehoods about you to stop? Yes. Is that the present state of affairs in America? Yes. Is it just? No. This is close to precedent-setting ground regarding your scores. If the reseller is required to investigate the incorrect information, are they not also required to correct the scores (which is certainly germane to the issue: you want a loan, and their report of you-- wherever they got it from-- is stopping you unjustly)? Talk to credit repair people and they'll tell you it takes months to correct your problem (actually their problem). Why months? Why do you have to lift a finger?
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| | Sunday, January 23, 2000 - 10:04 am Thanks for the input folks, I think my wife and I have agreed on the proper course of action to take. We both contacted the three major CRA's and requested copies of our credit reports. We should receive them in 6 to 8 days, according to them. After we receive them, we're going to file another lawsuit. Since I already know how to do this, this will be a cake walk. One thing I learned in my previous suit against Equifax, is that as soon as the Complaint is filed, your credit report is removed from the system and no reports are issued until the disputed information is corrected. There is a major issue here to be learned, that seems to escape most people. If a Credit Reporting Agency issues a credit report about you with erroneous information, THEY ARE LIABLE to you for damages. Period. End of story. This has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with whether or not you dispute it, or how they handle the dispute. The CRA's are required by the FCRA to maintain reasonable proceedures to assure the maximum possible accuracy of the information in your credit report. If you have a charge off, sold to a collection agency, and the collection agency says the date of last activity is the date they bought it, maybe two years after the charge off, the information is wrong, and the CRA is liable for it. NEXT IDEA: If "The Reports Wrong"(TRW), so is the risk score. Either in discovery or trial, I will obtain the equation for those risk scores to prove the damages. Any other ideas?
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| | Sunday, January 23, 2000 - 04:44 pm Gary: They wouldn't have to give you a trade secret (score algorithm). The best you can hope for is for them to run the scores before and after to show the damage-- still compelling evidence. Fair, Isaac creates the scores on the premise that the scores, and the underlying calculations are not public knowledge, and that once the rats in the study know how they are being studied, their behavior changes (invalidating the study). On the other hand, people who want to know how to better themselves should be allowed to know. If scoring is simply turning good credit habits into a number, why shouldn't anybody get a chance to become someone with better habits (by knowing exactly how many credit cards to have, for instance)? When the entire mortgage finance industry is betting on scores, and 800-pound gorillas Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have their fortunes tied to it, it would take more than a lawsuit to force them to reveal the formula. Competition is missing. The credit bureaus all use the same company to figure the scores, and when the bureaus are called on the issue, they slink away and send the same guy to represent all three of them (FTC ("Working for Consumer Protection and a COMPETITIVE Marketplace") credit scoring conference in July). If that's the spirit of strength through competition, I'm the King of England. I hope the three of them are reading this: BOCK, BOCK, BOCK.
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| | Monday, January 24, 2000 - 08:53 am Greg, whether or not they produce the algorithm will be up to the court to decide. The only option they have is to ask for a protection order from the court not to disclose the information to the general public, due to trade secrets. I would have to argue to the court why that should be allowed. If and when the time comes, I'll ask for everyones help with the arguement. Maybe one of the claims should be for a monopoly against Fair Iaasic, in producing every score on my credit report.
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