All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

Don't forget about Google Earth, a wonderful tool that can save you a lot of time. If the neighborhood is crappy, it's readily apparent.

Here's another perspective. The author makes some good points, I think.

There Are Too Many Car Brands, Anyway

Do you have a credible citation for this statement?

I sure agree with this. I've seen it many, many times, which is why I hate FICO scoring.

From "FICO 850: Achieving Perfect Credit"

Legal vs. Moral vs. Fair - I'm not going to try to convince anyone of the inherent fairness of these tactics, because I'll tell you right up front: These tactics just aren't fair, and here's why.

Most consumers aren't educated to how credit scores are derived, and the purveyor of the secret FICO formulae, the mysterious Fair, Isaac & Company (NYSE: FIC), likes it that way. So, by definition, the mere act of reading this seminar puts you at a horribly unfair advantage with respect to the hordes that are terribly blind.

Even worse, those FICO scores radically--or should I say, RADICALLY, in all caps--impact how much one pays for home mortgages, car loans, credit card interest, and even insurance premiums, among other things. Some potential employers, in fact, routinely pull credit reports in an effort to better judge the character of their applicants. What's worse is that not everyone agrees--certainly not all psychologists, a group I can dare to represent--that a FICO score provides a valid measure of one's personal character. The reason: horrible stuff can happen to otherwise moral people, all of which can completely trash a heretofore decades-old pristine payment history--accidents, uncooperative health insurance adjusters, sudden unemployment, expensive litigation, divorce with unsatisfactory terms, personal tragedies of all kinds, etc.

Consider this: Credit scores, and the credit reports that underlie them, have become a kind of "Human Worth Quotient" rather than simply a flexible credit score. For example, a potential employer disqualified a divorced woman, on the basis of her credit score, even though her runaway husband left her with huge debts beyond her means. Is this moral? It may not be moral, but it's legal. And it will be legal for the full seven years it takes for those correct but negative tradelines to naturally age off of her report. Oops, I should say, "age off of her reports"--because if she wants to confront this, she'll need to wrangle with three (not just one) sometimes uncooperative private companies who compile and sell those reports about her. Again, is this fair or moral? Perhaps not, depending upon your personal point of view, but one thing's certain: It's definitely legal.

Those of you who are reading this seminar certainly have an unfair advantage. Likewise, those of you who want to play hardball--with the ultimate goal of three clean credit bureau reports, irrespective of what's there now--will likewise enjoy an unfair advantage when armed with the guerilla tactics described here. But you'll be legal. Some of these techniques are delineated by Federal statute; in fact, and I'll say so when that's the case.

So it comes down to this: If you knew you could raise your FICO scores by 200 points and do it by breaking no laws, would you do so if you knew you weren't being fair to other consumers? I can't answer that for you. I will say that these private companies--i.e., the credit reporting agencies, some of the companies that use the resultant credit scores, as well as certain abusive collection agencies--are treating consumers unfairly every single day and don't seem to worry much about it at all. Is that true of all companies and in all cases? Of course not. Credit scoring allows colorblind loan qualifications (which is, I would contend, far superior to the pre-1971 system where white men--almost exclusively--made lending decisions in accordance with their subjective whims). My contention, however, is that the present system, in which these incredibly critical scoring formulas are kept secret and facilitated by three accident-prone privately-held credit reporting companies, is inherently unfair, inconvenient and often immoral. They're all legal, though.

Likewise, my personal advice--within this context but certainly NOT within all areas of your life--is to be like these companies. Adopt their modus operandi: Be concerned only with what's legal. Do what you can to improve your reified, unfair credit scores. The system needs to be fixed, in my opinion, but until it is, this remains unfortunately true: Less informed consumers must simply be left to fend for themselves.

I have to defend Mr. Diez, but only a little. He has undoubtedly met folks with valid disputes who have worn themselves out trying to get them resolved. Because the FICO scoring system is so riddled with glitches, it becomes a target for gaming, in which Mr. Diez enthusiastically engages because it's also profitable. But the bottom line is, if FICO was constructed better, there would be no system to game.

BTW, I've NEVER known a credit repair company that did anything for a consumer that he or she couldn't do for themselves for the cost of a stamp. Here, for example, is a guide that anyone can follow, and achieve the same results that Mr. Diez claims.

FICO 850: Achieving Perfect Credit

No matter which way you go--DIY or credit repair company--disputing takes time.

This board is probably not a good source of business, Mr. Diez. The vast majority of posters here are conservative, their own credit is impeccable (to hear them tell it) and they all think (rightly) everyone else should pay their bills on time, too.

That's what I said: If one manually confronts each merchant and, citing the Fair Credit Reporting Act, requests that they VERIFY the basis for an invalid derog, I don't see anything wrong with that. I suspect, however, that you utilize software available to anyone willing to pay for it to blitz the merchants with disputes--valid and invalid--in the hope that some of them will simply not respond within FCRA's statutory time limit, thereby gaming the system.

I have a friend who used to be an REO agent. She sold the most houses in the entire Century 21 system. She said that she had to be at her desk promptly by 8:00 a.m. every morning, could go to lunch only between X and Y each day, and couldn't leave until 5:00 p.m. each day. She earned 1% on every deal and wasn't allowed to double-end a deal. Why, then, are they so much fun to talk to? She was pretty miserable, but after she left that job, she was lots of fun.

Taz, have you ever assisted a consumer in disputing a valid derog? On a scale of 1 to 10--1 being easy, 10 being difficult--how did that go for you, generally?

Anyway...responding to Mr. Diez:

I meant that merchants must expense an entire department to handle consumer disputes--mostly invalid--via the CRAs that come to them via firms like yours. The result is higher costs for everyone.

Yes, that's right...the CRAs are so busy validating invalid disputes that it takes longer to rectify valid disputes. Thus, the consumer with a valid dispute cannot get their valid disputes rectified in a timely way.

This situation has spawned "rapid rescore"--a service designed to "deputize" the sub-CRAs to impact consumer credit at the bureau level so that one's FICO score can be restored sooner rather than later. Cost? Typically $25 per trade line per bureau. $75 to get to the truth sooner rather than later!

If you, the owner of a credit repair company, manually dispute or negotiate only that which is valid, I think that's fine. It's a time-consuming process and there's nothing wrong with paying someone else a fee to do that work. But that's not what credit repair companies do. They blanket dispute every item and hope that enough derogs fall off via "failure to verify" that the score is positively impacted.

Or, as Taz calls it, "gaming the system."

BTW, Taz, I heartily agree with your summation. If every citizen of this country lived like that, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in. Welcome to Nirvana.

It has taken a decade or longer for Fair Isaac to fix its significant FICO glitches, resulting in, cumulatively, millions of dollars of unmerited higher interest rates for those caught in the vise of FICO glitches.

Yes, we know that nearly all successful credit repair is accomplished through "failure to verify." Verification of credit data sure keeps creditors busy, resulting in higher costs to all consumers. Lovely.

For sure you haven't worked in the trenches analyzing credit reports and listening to the stories behind them. Unless every consumer is lying, some of their stories are hair-raising.



You found a lender on the Moon?



Sounds like you perceive the CRAs (credit reporting agencies) to be quasi-governmental agencies, rather than a collection of for-profit entities whose sole purpose is to provide a clearinghouse for tattling on consumers. And just how much public resources would you devote to the despicable "crime" of disputing what you believe to be an invalid entry? Or are you going to organize a Department of Thought Police, too?

I recently tried to help a consumer clear derogs from her credit report that were the result of identity theft. The person who stole her identity was convicted and was paying monthly restitution (repayment of credit cards he used illegally), yet after a year of laborious effort, she could not get two of her creditors to recognize the court paperwork she presented as proof that her identity was stolen and that was the reason for some lates. Because her FICO score was < 680, she had to get an FHA loan, with its attendant mandatory mortgage insurance, rather than a conforming loan, even though she would ideally have put 20% down to avoid mortgage insurance.

Another woman, intending to be out of town when her mortgage payment was due, used an online system (for the first time) to make her mortgage payment while she was gone. Apparently, she did something procedurally wrong and didn't "confirm" the instructions. When she returned, she learned that the payment wasn't made and she received a "recent 30 day late," the kiss o' death to a refinance lender. It took two months to get her behemoth lender to determine, by going into the bowels of its online system, that she had, in fact, visited the site and attempted to put a pre-payment instruction in place. It took another two months for the CRAs to apply the delete letter to her account, thereby positively impacting her score--by which time rates had climbed.

It was only recently, after I spent a decade battling the negative implications of invalid medical collections, that Fair Isaac recognized the intractable nature of medical collections, and adjusted its filters accordingly.

Such FICO anecdotes go on and on. Sorry, but FICO is all screwed up. While it's true that most consumers deserve their score, those who don't are unfairly and grossly penalized, resulting in a scoring system that's good for nothing.

Credit restoration companies, on the other hand, treat anyone with money to pay them as if all the consumer's derogs are invalid, resulting in what you call gaming the system. The practical reality is there's no other way to treat them.



Whether you have 1 valid derog and 1 invalid derog or you have 1 invalid derog, the score is the same. In other words, you've got to contest--and successfully remove--them all to get the score to move. This means that the person with two collection accounts--one valid and one invalid--has no incentive to pay either one. Even after you pay them, the score won't move for about two years. That's right, a paid collection account--valid or not--is the same as an unpaid collection account where the score is concerned.

Consumer: "I'm not paying $966 for something I don't owe!"

Loan officer: "Well, you've got to decide what hill you want to die on. Do you want to stand on principle and not get a loan, or do you want to pay the $966 and buy a home? Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?"

Don't you find that a bit twisted?