Mycroft, as you requested

POINTS TALLY
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FLA-TAN 5
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MYCROFT 0
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BYE BYE MYCROFT TRY MSN MONEY I'M SURE YOUR ADVICE IS NEEDED OVER THERE ASAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I really don't think Mycroft fits the proper description of being a troll.

That does not in my personal opinion change the fact that he seems very judgmental and the points made here about his inaccurate opinions don't help his popularity ratings much.

Let us hope that voicing displeasure as you and others have will convince him that he may want to modify his posts a bit and maybe quit trying to come off sounding so authoritarian and judgmental.

He has also tried a couple of tricks on me but I just ignored them.

 

Regardless,
CCN Steve needs to SERIOUSLY evaluate what mycroft has brought to this board since arriving.

(that involves reading all the threads he's posted to)

Established posters claiming he is giving out inaccurate info.
or
discussions started by his posts taking away(read: disruptive) from the original posters questions/comments.

 

He's one of the "best" the MSN boards have to offer.. that's where he's from.

 

From what I have seen over there I'd say that is a pretty darn accurate assessment.

(LOL)

 

Fla-tan, I do appreciate that you've taken the time to do this research. I know you're probably a busy man, answering all those e-mails you solicit, and that makes it even more important to me that you're willing to give me the chance to address your specific concerns head on rather than putting out vague inuendo.

I also appreciate that apparantly you have taken pity on me and have chosen to throw me nothing but soft-balls. I coundn't think of what I might have said that could be objectionable on a factual basis, but you sounded so confident that I worried anyway. Until I saw the threads you've chosen, that is.

These won't be in the same order as you posted them.

Nice shootin' Tex! You got me.

But then, I've already admitted that so that's not an issue.

In my own defense, I'll say I'm not a total idiot, I just spoke like one. The conversation was about contracts for deed and lease purchase agreements and then somebody threw the word foreclosure in there. The rules are different in those cases and my brain did a disconnect and I spewed nonsense.

No excuses, I was wrong. Mea Culpa.

I love that legal talk. Prima-facia violation, eh?

I think if you read what I put in that thread again, you will see that what I offered wasn't advice but a question.

They guy is in bankruptcy and had recieved a right to cure letter from a third party collector on a debt where the creditor had missed the boat on being included in the bankruptcy.

A right to cure letter essentially gives the debtor three options. 1) pay it. 2) tell us why you shouldn't have to pay it. 3) do nothing, wait for what we're gonna do.

It seemed to me this guy was ignoring an obvious solution to his problem. So I aksed, "Hey, you could do this obvious thing...what gives?" When I asked the question, both Keepmine and Bill Bauer gave great answers. I didn't get it because I misunderstood mw69's goals. He doesn't want to make the problem go away, he wants to spank the creditor who is behaving badly.

My participation in that thread is to learn, not to advise.

Anyway, the purpose of this exchange between you and I is for you to point out where I gave bad advice. Prima-facia violation or not, simply taking the dispute option in a right to cure letter is still a perfectly valid option. It may not be the one you favor, but anyone who askes for advice on a public message boards should expect different opinions.

You get no points here.

I'll take these all at the same time because they're all the same issue.

For the record, I never said that inquiries don't lower your FICO score. That's something you're reading into my words.

What I have said and continue to say is the following:

1) The effect is small.
2) It doesn't last long.
3) Unless you have a really great reason why you need an extra three points right away, it's not worth the effort to dispute them.

That's my opinion, and I stand behind it. I said it, I continue to say it, I will say it in the future.

I base that opinion on my experiance as a mortgage banker plus independent research I've done with the information Fair-Isaac company makes public.

I understand that lots of people disagree. I understand that this issue is a sore point with the public. I understand that inquiries drive people who are trying to repair their credit to obsession. None of that changes my opinion, none of that changes the advice I give to people.

Now in one of those threads Pincatel stated that he spent three months, 30 phone calls and many hours disputing ONE inquiry. If that doesn't support my argument that it's not worth the effort, I don't know what does.

In another, a woman said she was going to START her credit repair efforts by disputing inquiries that were TWO YEARS OLD. I told her it wasn't worth the effort, that she should start with something else. Do you argue with that?

In the third, I told the guy his inquiry is only important if 1) He planned to get new credit soon. 2)That lender pulled the one bureau it was on and 3)his credit was borderline where a few points would make a difference. If I remember, he didn't like my advice and opted not to take it, but that doesn't change that what I said was true, true and true.

Ah, the dreaded troll word.

I spent a lot of time reading old posts on this board, I wanted to learn something of its history. I put the word "troll" into the search engine to find out what sort of behavior was considered trollish. Then I looked through the posts of the people who had been called trolls to find out what kind of people they were. Then I looked through the posts of the people that called them trolls.

This board has a serious phobia about new users.

I understand that and I accept it. I understand that the culture that is here was not created by me, and that I still have more to learn of it. I understand that if I don't instantly fit into that culture, that I play a role in that too.

 

Ok. I'll play that little game!!! Which is it?
(LOL)

Well, I've studied that issue to a pretty fair extent and I've posted an awful lot about it. You see, trolling isn't just a casual thing. It is a deliberate attempt to accomplish some goal whatever that might be. There is usually a commercial purpose behind it but not always. Some trolls do it just for their own kicks. The problem I have with calling him a troll is that I fail to perceive any reason either constructive or
destructive for his posts. Looks like a pure ego trip to
me.

The vast majority of his posts are accurate, at least from his point of view.

While it would probably take someone such as Doc to do an accurate psychological evaluation of the perp, it does seem to me that he is highly egotistical. I base that on the fact that he is often talking about his vast experiences in the collections field. We have seen that kind around here before and one or two of them were fairly decent folks and they didn't try to force their opinions off on everybody using their umbiquitious claims of superior knowledge to do it.

The problem is that most of these collectors who come here do have valuable information we could use if we could just get them down off their high horses and answering some of our questions but they never seem interested in doing that.

As a result they usually realize sooner or later that they are in the proverbial position of being persona non grata and soon take off for greener pastures never to be heard from again.

I thought it kind of funny that he went back over to MSN bawling his eyes out and claiming that he had been viciously attacked over here.

Now then, I just can't help it but my curiosity has gotten the best of me so I gotta ask what else the heck did he expect when he came over here viciously attacking others?

 

And you still didn't come up with the correct right answers unless you also read my posts on the definitions of trolls which were not my inventions nor definitions but rather those provided by people on message boards and websites where the real trolls actually congregate and trade yarns about their adventures and the fuss and furror they caused.

I'll bet you didn't know that there are such message boards and message groups did you? I'll bet you just figured that was some term dreamed up by what you basically consider dum-dums to start off with. If so, then you are quite mistaken. Trolls are real people who do real things in real time and often do them both off and on the internet.

Not if they seriously come in looking for help.

 

Now then, Mycroft, while you are trying to tell us all about
Fico and what does and does not affect FICO let me suggest that you go read this little tid-bit.

http://consumeraffairs.com/news03/montana.html

Of course, I'm sure it won't give you a competitive edge except maybe on MSN because everybody else around here will also click on the link and learn a little more about scoring models.

 

Re: Re: Mycroft, as you requested

I've heard the term troll before.

My understanding of a troll has always been someone who joins a message board with the purpose of posting inflamitory messages without actually engaging in dialogue or contributing to the community.

An example might a christian who visits a jewish message board and tells everyone how great Jesus is. That person in only looking for converts, and has no interest in learning about jewish culture or religion. While I admire the christian religion, a person who would behave that way is just boorish.

No, I had no idea there was such thing as a troll message board. That sounds pretty funny. Can you imagine being a moderator there?

Message boards arn't what they used to be. Now everything is commercial.

By the way, I find that news websites are not good sources for in depth information on anything. On credit, a better source is this:

http://www.myfico.com/myfico/CreditCentral.asp

It's straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. I hope it does give you, and anyone who choses to go there, a competitive edge.

 

POINTS TALLY
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FLA-TAN 25
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MYCROFT 0
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Wow, five solid negatives and one neutral.

It's a good thing I learned to have a thick skin working as a bill collector all those years ago, I'm really not feeling the love today.

 

Well according to your MSN friends, we're all a bunch of scam artists here, arent we?

 

Well, there is one angle we might ought to consider here.

He did get his foot in the wrong garbage pail to start off with and he said that himself in net effect. At least he said he learned about this board from over there and that's close enough for government work. (LOL).

Now then, given the atmosphere and the general consensus of opinions over there IF I was to go over there and start posting I'd have to go in ranting about what a bunch of dimwits, numbskulls and scam artists there are on creditnet too just in order to get along over there.

I'd have to do something like that in order to get in good with the local yokels over there. Kinda ease in before I started trying to change opinions over there.
After I got in good then I could start to lighten up and trying to change the general mindset.

Maybe that's what he is trying to do over here, change the general mindset and slowly get us to change our minds on how we ought to be treating bill collectors and creditors.

Trying to convince us that we are doing wrong when we
fail to listen to them people because they are good moral people and real professionals.

I could understand that after the article in the ACA rag the other day. Kinda strange, the article in the ACA rag and mycroft coming along all at the same time. So maybe he is a troll in a sense, just that he may not be doing it for the sheer joy of creating hate and discontent as so many of them do.

The only part that don't fit that real well is the fact that
he used the same screen name here and over there too. If he had been real smart as a troll he would have used different screen names so he didn't drag his fame from over there to here. Most trolls are smarter than that. They usually change screen names so the regulars don't realize who they are from one board to another.

Whatever, he's exposed himself on both boards now by using the same screen name on each board. Seems to me that if he wants to feel loved he is either going to have to figure out which one he wants to call home and stay there because there is simply far too much difference in basic philosophy between the two to allow him to straddle the fence.

And now he would have a tough time changing screen names too because we are on to his style and so it wouldn't take long to spot him under any name.

I think he just needs to decide which place he feels most loved in and stay there trying to blend in with the crowd. He isn't doing too well blending in around here.

(LOL)

 

Re: Re: Mycroft, as you requested

First off, depending on your particular file, an inquiry CAN be worth more than 3 points. (or for that matter, sometimes less).

The effect does last some time. Inquiries are most important if less than 6 months old, but they do count toward your score for up to two years. I don't consider this a short time frame. Alot can happen in two years.

The effect is not small. Some creditors don't look just at the score, but at the presence of inquiries. Some creditors will turn you down with a high credit score just for having 1 recent inquiry. This happened to me and the inquiry I had was for an insurance quote where the insurer pulled my credit without my permission. So inquiries are valuable and worth disputing even if not for the direct effect on your score. Note that the term recent is subjective and each creditor uses a different definition (3 months, 6 months, 9 months, a year, etc).

 

Re: Re: Mycroft, as you requested

We're all a bunch of scam artists here, aren't we?
rackt3
=====================
Well Actually we're not. We just deal with the real con artist.

 

Re: Re: Mycroft, as you requested

Well, the thing about a message board is that it only takes a few people saying the same thing to make it seems like an overwhelming consensus. If five people hold an opinion and discuss it openly, it will take up a large percentage of the dialogue and make it seem like that's the attitude of the board even though its really only a tiny percentage of the overall population saying it.

That goes both ways. There are discussions over at MSN Money that are critical about creditnet, but there are also plenty of people at creditnet that slam MSN Money. This is true, but there are plenty of people that use both boards, and find value in each.

There are scam artists here and at MSN Money. There are scam artists everywhere, you can find them at your church or temple if you look hard enough.

My opinion is there is a very real need for a resource such as creditnet. While I am a former bill collector and have a tendency to see things from the creditor point of view, I also have seen mistakes and abuses and believe the consumer should have avenues of addressing these things. They need and should have access to information on how to defend their rights.

At the same time, such a resource will attract some people who are looking for an easy way out of their obligations, who are not so interested in making sure the creditors play by the rules as they are in making sure they get out of paying their creditors.

I don't see how you can have such a resource without attracting those people.

A great analogy would be a criminal defense attorney. The need for them is real, and the people that get into that line of work may very well be noble and good people, but you can't be a criminal defense attorney without working for criminals. Most of your clients will not be innocent people unjustly accused.

Do the people at MSN Money think this board is full of scam artists?

My answer to that is why should you care? Your concern should be if you ARE a scam artist. How do you conduct your life? If you're fine with the answers to those questions, you shouldn't need to worry about what someone else thinks of the crowd you hang out with.