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My mortgage company (not refi) pulled a merged file from all 3 and took the mid score; see if they are able to do this. They may only subscribe to TU though. If not, in retrospect, see if they are willing to negotiate a refund or at least partial refund of your fee. Go all the way to the top if you have to. We here can all write for tradeline deletions, why not use those skills to get something else you want? It's worth a shot, no? BUT!!! This is more evidence for us ALL to write our congress people and the FTC with very hardcore "flawed credit system" letters. We can make examples out of the monkies that milk us!
your lender must be using an older version of credit scoring software.. ask them if they know what version they are using... for TU it should be called "next generation" which would show up right before the score on the trimerged report.. No Mortgage broker or lender should ever charge application fees thats outrageous... try not to ever pay fees for anything.. kev
Update: Re: Trans Union Bastards! Hello folks, Promised you an update on the situation, and here it is. (1) Quite a few posts above are assuming that the lender is a mortgage broker. I do not want to reveal names, but that's an incorrect assumption. They are a direct lender, more specifically, they are a local credit union who lend money to members directly. (2) Took up the lady's offer to take a peek at the score and the report. The bottom of the lender's report says "Empirica Model Score: " and listed 712 next to it. Can any creditnetter on this board confirm if this is the same as FICO score? Or some other model ? (3) On my version of FICO score from myfico.com, I had 43 positive accounts listed (various accounts over the past 13 years) -- but on the lender's version, only 31 accounts are present. All my current creditors are present, and all are rated as "11111 ... " in the payment history column. So, it looks like about 14 of my past creditors are not showing up on the report. Who exactly were missing on their report, I cannot say off hand, since I am not allowed to take a photocopy. While I cannot say for sure, I don't think I closed 12 credit card accounts earlier than Nov 1993 .... (that would prompt them dropping off the reports after 10 year period) Only once in the past, before Fair Isaac revealed around 1998 that closing accounts actually hurts FICO score, did I close about 6-7 accounts at one go. Most likely it was in 1997. I was about to buy a car, and thought lenders would look at too many accounts open as a negative factor... I did get the car and 2.9% interest rate too, so closing those accounts hadn't hurt me too much. (4) I do not want to threaten the credit union to get a lender's copy, since other than this fiasco, I am quite happy with them. I do not want to antagonize if I don't have to -- I'd like to keep the relationship cordial. Any suggestions as to what my next steps are ? (5) The amount in question is $168,000. On an appraisal of $300,000. (6) About the application fee ... the disclosure is made upfront, so I cannot claim that I'm unaware. It also said that I'd forfeit the fee if I later decide to discontinue the refi. No fraud there. (7) About my other existing obligations that could have pulled my score down? No, except for this mortgage, I do not carry any other debt. I do have $1800 balance on a credit card currently, and that showed up correctly on the report. But I have $10,000 limit on this card, and also intend to pay it off in full, as I usually do, before the due date.
Re: Re: Re: Trans Union Bastards! Hi Jen, Dunno if you are addressing this to me ... but if you are, I did not ever have any baddies on my report that eventually dropped out. Also peeked at the lender's copy, all tradeline do show up as always paid on time ... yet the score is different. But quite a few of my older accounts are missing.
Re: Re: Trans Union Bastards! kustomkat, Thanks for your suggestion. I left a message in my lender's voice mailbox, and will let you know what version they are using, if she answers my question. About the application fee ... I went in with my eyes open, and the disclosure about the fee was upfront. Also, in NJ, $300 application fee is not that outrageous. Almost *ALL* lenders require it. But sometimes (and definitely in this case), if closing were to occur, this money would have been refunded. Otherwise it's lost.
Re: Re: Re: Trans Union Bastards! No internal score card, only straight score from TU. And apparently, they do not have any flexibility to deviate from the guidelines. Thus the question of stability does not arise. Not that it would have mattered; am employed with the same employer for more than 5 years, and stayed at the same home for just a little more than 3 years now. Debt ratios? Except for $1800 balance on my Citi card, which I usually pay in full every month, I do not have any other debt. Am excluding the mortgage itself, of course.
Re: Re: Trans Union Bastards! Hi Tony, Thanks ... but antagonizing the credit union is not something I'd like to do. This particular CU subscribes only to TU, and no other bureau.
Re: Re: Re: Trans Union Bastards! I guess I can see how you'd want to go along to get along with respect to your lender. It's not often you find a CU that takes care of you. On the other hand, a simple inquiry in the name of consumer interest might not be all bad. I'm going to contact my CU and let them know that, while I appreciate their service to me, I have a concern that the CRAs might be providing reports containing information for which I might not have prior knowledge. This information could not only be inaccurate, but ultimately prejudicial. It's patently unfair for a lender to possess financial information that a consumer reasonably believes no longer exists. And there are a good many CUs and other lenders who might not want to play along with that.
Re: Re: Re: Trans Union Bastards! jrjr37, Maybe the jeweler has been sold or merged with the one you dealt with 12 years ago and has an internal database.
Re: Re: Re: Trans Union Bastards! I agree with tonyd about writing to Senators and Congressmen, including those on the committees that deal with these issues.
Re: Re: Re: Trans Union Bastards! You are both a customer and owner of the credit union of which you are a member. Far from "getting them in trouble", you would be assisting them in both complying with the law and providing the best rates to both you and their other customers when TU is reporting partial information. TU has a duty to both you as a consumer and to the CU as their customer to provide this information accurately. The CU has as much of an interest in this as you do. Request their copy of your report in writing, pointing out that their report from which they made their decision did not agree with the report that TU had provided to you. Also note that their employee had told you that TU's contract did not allow disclosure to you, but that this clause in their contract with TU was specifically prohibited by Federal FCRA section 607(c) (quote it), and that you were sure that they would be happy to comply with Federal law to help you, their customer. If they still claim in their reply that TU will not let them disclose their report to you, you can then complain against TU to HUD, who are probably the most interested that lenders base mortgage lending on accurate borrower information. Send HUD a copy of their letter. Even if the lender has access to information older than 7 years to make their decision on, this should have been in your report also. You should be able to see whatever a lender sees, to be able to correct it if it is wrong. That is the purpose of FCRA: to provide disclosure to the consumer and provide a mechanism for correction of errors. Evading disclosure undermines the limitations on liability of the CRA. Note that under FCRA the SOL clock for the CRA's liability for reporting inaccurate information on you does not start until you find out or could have found out that they were reporting in error. It is also possible that the CU obtained this information from TU thru some other vendor, such as those that generate tri-merged reports, and that your credit information was stripped out at this point. Assuming your CU chose this vendor, your CU has an obligation to see that the reports they get from them are accurate and do not shortchange you. If their loan process did not produce a good faith evaluation of your lendability, which is what you paid for with your fees, ask for your fees back, since their supplier was negligent. Problems will seldom fix themselves, and throwing money at them seldom helps when others are not doing their jobs. Place the responsibility where it belongs, hold all parties accountable, and let the chips fall where they may. Good companies will work with their customers to produce good results. These are my opinions and not legal advice.
Update: Re: Trans Union Bastards! lakpr: I had the same problem in July. The lender told me that there contract with the CRA doesn't allow them to give out a copy of the report. But after a few conversations with the loan officer, I convinced her to provide me with the information. She abided by their contractual obligations and did not give me a copy of the report --- but she did however, type each and every tradeline into an email, complete with status info, into an email for me. This way I at least new which tradelines were being reported and compare them to what I had on the report I had pulled from myfico.com. The file information was quite different, and the scores were quite different also. Some in my favor - some against. But they were all fico, beacon, or empirica scores. The problem continues to be that I don't have the lenders report to support my claims. I may know that there is clearly a discrepancy, but I can't prove it. Also, in your case, may I suggest that since your CU is allowing you to look at your paperwork, you go back with your copy of your myfico.com reports, and take notes of the differences. Though they won't allow you to take 'their' report with you, nothing prevents you from doing the comparison between your reports and their reports in their offices. You just won't be able to prove any of it afterwards. I suppose if you ever got to the lawsuit stage, your attorney could subpoena the paperwork ... Just my 2 cents ...
Update: Re: Trans Union Bastards! That smells like fraud to me kickman [. [/B][/QUOTE] Biggest one ever pushed off on the consumer.
Re: Update: Re: Trans Union Bastards! Take a look at this, guys ... http://consumers.creditnet.com/straighttalk/board/showthread.php?postid=388896#post388896 ... we might be on to something huge and some beautiful day I might invite you to join a lawsuit against the Big Three ...
