It’s been a long time since we’ve written about personal finance on Random Thoughts, a long time since I’ve personally written about much of anything on here. I don’t rail and complain about much these days. Part of the reason it is that I may just have gotten smarter than I used to be about managing my anger and expectations. -Not in some great general sense; just those two areas. I’ve spent the better part of the last six months trying to take stock of what annoys me and eliminating it from my horizon, avoidance being a better solution for me nowadays than mutual harmful conflicts, verbal and otherwise. Eliminating mendacity and distress from one’s daily life is easier said than done with a lot of things in America, and I’m no Buddhist or pacifist.
One of the most pernicious of stacked decks against the American citizen is an institution called the credit bureau.
The claim that Equifax, Experian and Transunion are there to monitor consumers so they may build a transparent historical record of their borrowing -and thereby improve said consumers’ ability to borrow -and borrow at rates that reflect their trustworthiness is one of the biggest scams in banking and finance, which is saying plenty when you think of all the variants on the pyramid scheme concept that are allowed by the Wall Street deregulation of the 2000s, and conversely also by actual laws passed for the last 50 years.
Think about this:
The three credit bureaus report increases in debt almost immediately, but not the paying down of debt. They can take months, if not years to correct a credit report. Equifax has a ridiculously incomplete survey of financial institutions compared to the other two, in some cases skewing a person’s debt load in a negative direction because of its incomplete reporting.
The three credit bureaus report also account for any and all inquiries negatively, so the very act of requesting a correction (which they uniformly call a “dispute”) affects your credit report negatively: Really focus in on that for a moment dear reader, the very act of correcting their oversights or mistakes affects your credit score negatively. This used to be called “getting took coming and going.”
Bottom line, these credit bureaus simply exist to make it easier for lenders to charge higher interest rates on individuals, and nothing more.
This is what is called a scam, pure and simple. These are rackets, and they engage in predatory practices. Among all of the unfair things that the credit card industry does, like changing the APR applied to something already purchased (think about that real hard, you buy a TV, and your credit card company changes the rate on that old purchase, effectively changing the price you paid on it, nowhere else in business does that happen,) the operations of these credit bureaus are among the worst things preying on American families… well that and the fact that they are now also doing big business getting people to pay for access to their credit scores and credit reports.
From my own personal experience, I’ve never missed a payment in my life and I’m now 43. My 3 credit scores only average about 760. The reasoning the credit bureaus gave for disregarding years of my timely and often times early repayment of debt?
I didn’t buy a home.
The absolute gall of these liars in citing that most depreciated investment in America: a unit of purchase that has destroyed the lives of millions of people as a criteria in these hard times. The reason the bureaus claim they have effectively ignored my proven record and frozen my identity as a borrower from further “improvement” in their scoring system is simple. They did it in order to allow my creditors to keep charging me rates they know I don’t deserve. This is disgusting. It should be criminal. But the credit bureaus are a largely self-regulated group of institutions, and what laws govern their behavior were practically authored by their own lobbyists and lawyers.
I suppose they’d tell someone who did buy a house that their credit ratings and scores won’t ever go up regardless of their spotless record because they did buy a home.
“Coming and going” my friends, “coming and going.”
-SJ
One of the most pernicious of stacked decks against the American citizen is an institution called the credit bureau.
The claim that Equifax, Experian and Transunion are there to monitor consumers so they may build a transparent historical record of their borrowing -and thereby improve said consumers’ ability to borrow -and borrow at rates that reflect their trustworthiness is one of the biggest scams in banking and finance, which is saying plenty when you think of all the variants on the pyramid scheme concept that are allowed by the Wall Street deregulation of the 2000s, and conversely also by actual laws passed for the last 50 years.
Think about this:
The three credit bureaus report increases in debt almost immediately, but not the paying down of debt. They can take months, if not years to correct a credit report. Equifax has a ridiculously incomplete survey of financial institutions compared to the other two, in some cases skewing a person’s debt load in a negative direction because of its incomplete reporting.
The three credit bureaus report also account for any and all inquiries negatively, so the very act of requesting a correction (which they uniformly call a “dispute”) affects your credit report negatively: Really focus in on that for a moment dear reader, the very act of correcting their oversights or mistakes affects your credit score negatively. This used to be called “getting took coming and going.”
Bottom line, these credit bureaus simply exist to make it easier for lenders to charge higher interest rates on individuals, and nothing more.
This is what is called a scam, pure and simple. These are rackets, and they engage in predatory practices. Among all of the unfair things that the credit card industry does, like changing the APR applied to something already purchased (think about that real hard, you buy a TV, and your credit card company changes the rate on that old purchase, effectively changing the price you paid on it, nowhere else in business does that happen,) the operations of these credit bureaus are among the worst things preying on American families… well that and the fact that they are now also doing big business getting people to pay for access to their credit scores and credit reports.
From my own personal experience, I’ve never missed a payment in my life and I’m now 43. My 3 credit scores only average about 760. The reasoning the credit bureaus gave for disregarding years of my timely and often times early repayment of debt?
I didn’t buy a home.
The absolute gall of these liars in citing that most depreciated investment in America: a unit of purchase that has destroyed the lives of millions of people as a criteria in these hard times. The reason the bureaus claim they have effectively ignored my proven record and frozen my identity as a borrower from further “improvement” in their scoring system is simple. They did it in order to allow my creditors to keep charging me rates they know I don’t deserve. This is disgusting. It should be criminal. But the credit bureaus are a largely self-regulated group of institutions, and what laws govern their behavior were practically authored by their own lobbyists and lawyers.
I suppose they’d tell someone who did buy a house that their credit ratings and scores won’t ever go up regardless of their spotless record because they did buy a home.
“Coming and going” my friends, “coming and going.”
-SJ