Did You Know We All Have a New Secret Credit Score?

Just when you think that you’ve seen it all on the greed and deception in the financial sector, something new pops up. Back on February 14th Experian (one of the top three national credit bureaus), decided that they no longer were going to provide Fico credit scores to consumers.

There’s different speculations on why, but regardless of their reasons, this is not good for the consumers. Credit bureaus have always had secrets, they measure almost every activity that they receive reports on from lenders and credit card companies. They use sophisticated algorithms that are based on historical information to categorize every possible aspect of consumer credit worthiness.

Experian will still provide Fico credit scores to lenders, that’s one of their biggest profit generators. But they will no longer sell or provide the Fico credit score to individuals. The lax laws that govern credit in this country are weak at best. And there is nothing that stops the credit bureaus from doing anything other than they must respond in set amount of time.

In fact Experian has demonstrated the worst track record of any of the top three in every consumer credit area. As we reported two weeks ago, Experian makes it difficult to report and correct incorrect information unless you are a paying customer. You cannot talk to a human; just access a voice actuated phone response system that is difficult to navigate.

You can still buy a credit score from Experian but it will be one of their own internal products and may not compare to your Fico credit score. One of the given reasons for eliminating selling Fico credit scores to consumers is that Fair Issac (the company that invented the system used to create Fico credit scores) made unreasonable demands in compensation. Translation, it’s all about the money.

Experian has been trying to pitch their own scoring methods for years due to greater profits and now have finally dumped the Fico credit score access to consumers so they don’t have to pay Fair Issac any commissions. Considering Experian could have easily raised the fee to consumers to compensate for the Fair Issac cost, why would they just quit? Once again, it’s about the money.

So why is this such a big deal to consumers? Two reasons. One is that most mortgage lenders use an average of the three Fico credit scores they receive from the major credit bureaus. So if you have a missing score, how are you going to address the lowest score to bring up the average? You don’t know one of the three, and that’s not a very good thing.

Being denied access to something as important as your Fico credit score is a problem in other areas too. Prospective employers and insurance companies often use your Fico credit score to determine eligibility and rates. Leasing companies (both for real estate and cars) do too. So this can impact you in more ways than just mortgages.

As most are aware (you would have to be dead, living in a cave, or on a desert island not to know) a major part of the recent financial crisis is closely connected to the credit and lending area. If people can’t get credit, they can’t buy large purchase items like houses, cars, or even large appliances.

So why in the world would Experian choose now to pull this on consumers? One of the reasons is that their revenues are down and they are trying to cut costs. That’s reasonable on the surface, but not reasonable at the expense of consumers. Credit transactions are way down, so Experian is trying to make every dollar they can, no matter what impact it has on consumers.

So what can consumers do about this new secret Fico credit score? It’s not illegal; there are no laws that cover this type of scenario. Experian obviously doesn’t care, and neither do the lenders who choose to buy the Fico credit score. Which leaves you with only one choice.

Write to your congressman and senator. If enough people start to complain and bring this to the attention of our elected officials, they can amend the current laws. The laws were just amended in 2003 to require the lender who denied you credit to furnish the credit bureaus and reports that they based this decision on so that you could review and take some kind of corrective action.

But the problem with the law now is that they did not specify that the credit reports supplied to the lenders and the credit reports supplied to the consumer be the same. The intent was there, but as usual our friends at Experian have found a loophole and are taking advantage of it.

To get any action from your elected official, I would suggest you call and write. And if you get no response, don’t stop calling and writing until you do. This is important enough to continue until there is some type of solution. You can find your senator and representative contact information here: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/.