Greg, interesting you mention Westin, lol. You strike me as someone who'd fit in quite well at Columbia yourself. (Or, maybe Westin strikes me as someone who would like your web sites.) I'll hunt for the Welcome Wagon reference, although I'm not sure I'll find it so quickly. It is one of those bits you don't soon forget, though. Equifax has a jaded, although largely secret, history. I know relatively nothing about the other two -- except that Trans Union began life as a local Chicago bureau, and Experian is a relative newcomer compared to TU and Equifax. Doc
Hi, I'm travelling, but trying to keep up with goings on. Something strikes me about the statistical part of the argument. Statistics, in and of themselves, as pure, raw mathematics, are completely unbiased, agreed? OK, so in the absence of any outside influence, these 29% of all tradelines that are theoretically in error, they should form some sort of a statistical bell curve, right? Some should be a little bad for our credit health, some should be fairly bad, and a select few of these errors should be incredibly bad, right? That's how bell curves work; they taper off further and further from the median. But, the other half of the story with bell curves is the other half of the bell curve. Theoretically, for every tradeline that erroneously reports someone as being 90 days late when they weren't, having a maxed out account when they didn't, defaulting when they didn't, etc., there should exist, somewhere, out there in the ficosphere, an errant positive tradeline that reports someone who keeps a perfect 15% debt ratio when they don't, has made double payments on every mortgage payment when they haven't, and a true deadbeat has three sterling Credit Reports, with three 900 FICO scores, when they've actually stiffed ever creditor known to man. Just think, if this is true, then every time GEORGE gets another inexplicable denial, and SCREAMS LOUDLY about it, some true deadbeat, with a 23 year history of deadbeat-ism, gets a Citibank Platinum Card in the mail, Pre-Approved, of course, and with a very high credit limit, and mutters quietly, gratefully to themselves; the other end of the bell curve, personified. I want to meet this person. I'm not sure why; I just do. Question: Is there any evidence that the other half of the bell curve actually exists? And, if, as I (and probably many of you) suspect, there is not, is that evidence, in and of itself, that the FICO model is somehow improperly influenced by outside forces? In other words, is it deliberately skewed to make all of it's "mistakes" in favor of the "house"? Cheers!
I believe that everyone who has at least 10 accounts on their reports has continuous inaccuracies. Why? Because many companies don't report monthly to the Bureaus to update balances. Out of my 20 accounts I have 4 which do not update on a monthly basis. Of these it seems to be a quarterly update. From what I can tell, these companies have a "primary" CB they report to monthly and then with the other two, they only get updated after months and months of sitting stagnant. Both of my mortgages report like this and since I'm into almost all principle on one of them the difference per month is significant. How fair or "accurate" is that?
Hey, G.Fisher, I did a quick internet search and came up with some anecdotal stuff right off the bat. Not exactly hard data, but still fun: "In the 1970's Americans demanded action from congress to protect privacy. There was no question who the villains were. Congress responded with the "Fair Credit Reporting Act" aimed squarely at credit bureaus and their so-called "credit reports" full of personal data gathered from an infinite number of sources (including Welcome Wagon hostesses). Congress could see that credit bureaus made data that should never have been gathered in the first place available to anyone with a wallet and took action to control it. After unprecedented lobbying by banks and credit bureaus a much watered down law was finally passed." The rest of that page isn't too rich: http://members.aol.com/victcrdrpt/identity.html Equifax's official history page is about as sanitized as they come, of course. I noticed that 1970 appears in their timeline this way: 1970 Â All of the company's credit files become automated. How coincidental that Equifax computerized their data the same year the FCRA was enacted (which virtually eliminated all those hand-scrawled spy notes they kept regarding every consumer). The first entry was this: 1899 Â Cator and Guy Woolford open Retail Credit Company in Atlanta, Ga. I'd like to know more about the dark inside history of Equifax, LOL. Doc
You're in the right neighborhood but on the wrong street heading to the wrong house: Directions to the right street and house number: Fico is set up to take advantage of the credit report errors. This is no mistake it was deliberate.Everything is in the houses favor not by chance but by design:!
Just to chime in (even if it is a little late in the conversation): FICO does rate you based on your neighborhood - zip codes all have a little plus or minus attached to it. The guys at Fair Isaac admitted to this at the credit scoring conference I went to (where I met Greg Fischer, BTW). The other thing they give points to are things outside of credit. The biggest one is a bias based age, which otherwise in the lending process is illegal. But for the FICO scoring process, the FTC made an exception. (It's somewhere on the FTC site that they agreed to do this.) FICO scores may be ok in concept, but you can't fight unfairness when you don't know what you are fighting (the exact scoring methods). I also object to the fact that you can't make your case to a lender. It used to be that a lender would forgive some bloopers on your credit report if overall you had a good payment history. Now, if your score is below a certain level, they WON"T EVEN TALK to you. I object to that also.
... assuming you weren't Black, gay, lesbian, disabled, had a foreign accent, or whatever else yanked the loan officer's chain. Doc
G.Fisher, in poking around Google, I found a few other interesting tidbits about Equifax, especially when searching using it's pre-1975 corporate name -- "Retail Credit Company"... First, there is an art professor at Oral Roberts University, one Professor Latta, who worked as an investigator in Goldsboro, NC in the early 1960s. Basically his job was to snoop around, collect the data, and send it back to headquarters. I just sent him a friendly email to see if he'd be willing to share any interesting tidbits. Second, evidently Retail Credit hired a lot of snoopy young men throughout much of the 20th century. If you search, you'll find many others, one of which was US Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. Here's a quote from a biography: "Near the end of my first year in Birmingham, I became the representative of the Retail Credit Company of Atlanta, Ga., which company paid me 50 cents each for reports on the life and habits of life insurance applicants. This later developed in Birmingham into a business worth $100.00 or more per month to me, a substantial addition to my small income. With this business, and other small fees I picked up in the Inferior Courts, I was no longer worried about making a living." Fifty cents to note "the life and habits" of an otherwise private citizen was nice money in those days. Here's the link: http://www.uiowa.edu/~cyberlaw/elp01/HLB0406.html Next, I found another Welcome Wagon reference on this page: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/perrolle/book/chapter10.html Here's the quote: "...one bureau gathered data through such means as sponsoring local welcome wagon ladies, who greet newcomers and report back to credit bureaus their former residence (so that a credit file can be obtained from the previous locale) and their 'worthiness' for credit." I think it would be fun to write a book -- "The Secret History of Equifax"... Doc
"However, they do not consider:... Where you live." - Fair, Isaac http://www.myfico.com/MyFICO/CreditCentral/ScoringWorks/FICOIgnores.htm
I remember those nice welcome wagon ladies real well. First ones ever came to my house got a tin can tied to their tails real quick. I already knew all about their little game. People were talking about it back then and telling them that things they told the Welcome Wagon ladies was showing up on their credit reports when they went to get a loan and so I was all ready for them. They parked out in front of the house one day in a nice shiny white station wagon with "Welcome Wagon" on the side of it. Two ladies got out of the car and one of them had a notebook or something under her arm and the other one had a bunch of junk all wrapped up nice and pretty. Looked like some kind of an easter egg basket. They got all smiley faced and held out their hands like they thought I might want to hold hands or kiss them or something and said they was from the welcome wagon. I told them I could see that plain as day. Then they said they had brought some gifts from the local merchants who wanted to welcome me to the city. I told them to take their gifts and get back in their little welcome wagon get gone and don't ever come back. Found out later that even got reported against me.
Hey Greg, I thought the credit score did consider your neighborhood. At least, that's what I saw on the slide show. Or does being 40 make your memory go to mush? PsychDoc: Yeah, they need some kind of level playing field to prevent discrimination. I just think they need to tweak what the have to get out all of the lumps.
I believe professor Greg is pointing out the difference between what they say they do, and what they do.
The slide show was a red herring. http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/creditscoring/present/index.htm It mentions "Own/Rent," "Occupation," "Years on Job" and "Debt Ratio," too, but those aren't FICO factors. http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/creditscoring/present/sld008.htm "It is not an actual credit scoring scorecard, so don't go home and try to score yourself on this and get into a major tiz about your score. I'll just use it to illustrate a couple of points here." - Fair, Isaac http://www.creditscoring.com/pages/forumtranscript.htm#page18
Breeze: Looks to me like he is using an html to ascii converter and forgot to turn off the line numbers function.
I just didn't bother taking out the numbers. I was commenting on the guy's comments - that they stand around the water fountain and pull the numbers out of their ears.
Originaly the FICO rip off was deceitfully passed off as a method of measuring ceredit worth. Lately it appears some would have you believe it was intruduced to eliminate or reduce discrimination toward minority groups. Come on people as long as Fico is rationalized away with excuses like these it will continue to fleece all groups majority and minority alike!
lbrown59, you've convinced me with your powerful arguments! FICO is a carefully orchestrated plot to fleece honest Americans and to deprive us of our God-given right to due process! FICO is the worst scourge on the American financial system since perhaps the 1920s when Charles Ponzi purveyed foreign postal coupons to the unwitting masses. FICO is an attempt to keep us from becoming home buyers and credit card customers so that somebody -- Mr. FICO, perhaps -- can make money somehow at our expense -- not sure how, but lbrown59 has that part figured out, and I'm hopping mad about it! FICO as a social force is far more harmful than drug abuse, sexual harassment, or even mid-century Communism. Stamp out FICO! Doc
