An Academic exercise: If our creditworthiness is determined by FICO points, and our ability to get credit and what it will cost is determined by our FICO score, can we sue CB's to add FICO points? I had a Sherman Acquisitions Account erroneously added to my CB file. FICO took a 40 point drop immediately. Sherman's Trade Line was removed today and I only got 14 of those points back. In the interim there have been no inquiriies, no delinquencies, no new credit, only balance reductions caused by payments. Can I sue Experian to put the missing 26 points back? Has it ever been done? Successfully?
I don't think the bureaus know the algorithm that prepares the scores. They just feed their data into Fair-Isaac's formula.
Be that as it may, I wonder if their ignorance or lack of control legally excuses them from responsibility for damages to a consumer caused by those inaccuracies?
Maybe not, but my point is that no credit bureau can be expected to know what to do to give you x number of FICO points. The only thing they could do would be to restore your credit file to a known point in time that corresponded with the FICO number you were looking for. Even this wouldn't work since I'm sure one of the variables in the equations is time. Say on March 3rd your score was x. A change is made to your report and on March 11th, your score is x-5. Simply restoring the credit file to the March 3rd version isn't going to change the fact that the FICO formula will now process that data knowing that today is March 11th. The March 3rd data may give you the FICO of x that you were looking for, or it might give you something totally different. I'm sure these are not linear equations we're talking about here... Suing a credit bureau to demand that your credit score is a specific number is like suing the weatherman because he predicted a high temperature of 70 degrees and it turned out to be 69.8 degrees. The weatherman took all of the available data into consideration, but he doesn't know the formula that Mother Nature uses to determine the temperature. Winds at x MPH, barometric pressure of y bars and a high pressure system 12.1 miles northwest of his measuring station may one day yield 68 degrees and the next day yield 71.
Well, if it is Exp you do not really know what you're score is. Exp does not sell their score to the consumer, if you actually pulled a report with the real FICO, then that would be 2 hard iqs. See where I am going?
The original poster said FICO, so I talked about FICO. You want to sue them to get your FAKO points back? I'm not sure what good that would do, but I suppose they could hard-code their web page to show you whatever number you want to see. I know what the original poster's point was, and I agree it's frustrating when we are all living and dying by small movements in our scores and things don't turn out the way we want. I hate it too. But when we talk about suing we should make sure we're asking for something that can actually happen. All of the judges in the country can rule that it should be sunny at midnight, but that doesn't mean it's ever going to happen.
Re: Re: Sue CB for FICO Points? The poster said Exp, Exp does not give the public access to their FICO
Re: Re: Re: Re: Sue CB for FICO Points? I UNDERSTAND he said FICO, but alot of newbies do not realize that EXP. does not offer FICO to the public. Why so defensive? Now did you see that he/she said can they sue Exp for losing FICO pts.
Those are excellent observations but in my not so humble opinion the credit bureaus are not gods regardless of what they might like us to believe. While I am quite often accused of jumping to all manner of false assumptionsand conclusions and at the not so inconsiderable risk of being so accused again in this instance, I believe that weather is an act of God over which no mortal man has control, all attempts at cloud seeding aside. I find it incredulous that a credit bureau can be considered a god if for no other reason that while they may indeed have houses of worship in which they apparently practice the FICO religion, gods do not worship anybody that I ever heard tell of. Thereby proving in my opinion that they are not gods but merely worshippers of FICO. My conclusion is therefore that the harm done to consumers by these houses of worship is done by man to his fellow man and is not attributable to the act of some f*c@ing (Ficoing that is) diety. In all probability however you are still very close to being practically correct since for all the good its likely to do to scream about it FICO might just about as well be some kind of diety.
Re: Re: Sue CB for FICO Points? In other words, while it ain't fair it's likely to be a cold day in hell before we'll ever get anything done about it.
Re: Re: Re: Sue CB for FICO Points? Be that as it may, the translation has about as much humor in it as a FICO score.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sue CB for FICO Points? Don't mean to be defensive. There are other ways to get your FICO score than you pulling it yourself. In fact, you pulling your own score is the most meaningless use of FICO. I agree that Experian does not offer FICO scores to the public, and you are correct to point it out for the sake of those who do not know. But new people should also understand that just because Experian doesn't sell the score to the public, creditors can still generate Fair-Isaac scores from Experian data.
Maybe not, but my point is that no credit bureau can be expected to know what to do to give you x number of FICO points. ===================== All they need to do is give back the same number of points that they took off because of the error,simple as that. The END ************************* LB 59
Re: Re: Sue CB for FICO Points? OK, so now we have the old finger-pointing evasion of responsibility. "I only mined the lead" "I only refined the lead" "I only shaped it into a bullet" "I only assembled the bullet" "I only manufactured the gun" "I only sold the gun" "I only sold the bullet" But all helped wage the war. Fair Isaac comes up with a mathematical model that is supposed to predict credit defaults. The model is so complex no person, including Fair Isaac's own people, can explain how it works. The CB's only use the Algorithm. The lenders only swear by its accuracy. We, the consumers of America, get screwed by it in the form of higher interest rates, more stringent conditions or inability to get credit altogether. Maybe there's a lawyer out there willing to file a class action suit against all parties in this conspiracy to keep lending rates high - Fair Isaac, the major CB's and the major lenders. SOMEONE is liable, let the players sort out who. MY point isn't to restore a CB file to a certain day - it's to point out the logical absurdity of the FICO algorithm. It penalizes for a negative entry, the, everything else being the same, maintains part of the penalty when that same negative is removed. It is so obviously tilted in such a way as to generate scores lower than necessary, and that bias is highly profitable for the lenders.
Re: Re: Re: Sue CB for FICO Points? But you don't KNOW what caused the difference in score because you don't know the formula. Now if you are saying that there is DATA on your credit report that gets fed into the formula that is not disclosed to consumers, then I think you have a real issue.
