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The careless errors of credit reporting agencies

washingtonpost.com

221–230 of 313 posts

Re: The careless errors of credit reporting agencies

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individual states already issue identification cards, and people use that all the time for this purpose. In a system like the US, I think it's better for the states to handle identification cards, not the federal government. There's a lot of details that go into identifying someone, and your local state is best equipped to handle that. To give a few examples: What's the procedure for changing your name? A lot of peop…

> What's the procedure for changing your name? A lot of people change their name after marriage or divorce. Those are usually handled by the states, so adding a federal government in there raises the net complexity. To be clear, the federal government is already involved with name changes-- in fact, though my name change was issued by a state court, I had to get it changed with Social Security before I could get a ne…

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Re: The careless errors of credit reporting agencies

#222
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same goes for every credit rating agency in the country (world?). Remember all those AAA rated swaps? It is disturbing how the entire economic system is set up to make life harder on those it's hardest on. Poor, in debt, barely making ends meet? You're lucky if you can get a credit card for under 30% APR. Mortgage rates historically low? Not for you. Need a loan? Sucks to be you. Finally clawed your way out of debt,…

It makes perfect sense. Loans are borrowing you need to pay back. If you dont pay back then some honest hardworking person loses his savings. When we ignored the basic laws of economics we had a mortgage crisis and thousands of people lost their savings and jobs.

"...some hardworking person loses their savings"

No they don't. Loans are insured against default. Interest rates more than cover extremely low default rates and then some.

Re: The careless errors of credit reporting agencies

#223
post #74

Speaking of credit annoyances, I've seen a lot of "dark patterns" appearing on the credit agency websites for ordering your Federally-mandated free annual credit report. Their workflow for getting the credit report is structured to push you towards signing up for some kind of monthly subscription to some monitoring service, to the point where it's very difficult to find the buttons to just get the free credit report.…

UK credit score provider Experian used to rely on dark patterns[1] but seems to have moved towards offering consumer finance price comparison services with the useful side benefit of being able to search for stuff you'll be approved for. (I doubt they get many signups for the £14.99 a month "premium" service now they're pushing the free one alongside it) I can't think of many more unconscionable models for a secondar…

I just signed up and they advertised that it cost $1 to get a report.

BUT they sign you up for a $22 / mo service. It is not very obvious that they did this, and it's somewhat difficult to deactivate your account. (I imagine people here wouldn't have a problem, but I'm imagining the average person here).

That to me is a dark patten.

Re: The careless errors of credit reporting agencies

#224
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes perfect sense. Loans are borrowing you need to pay back. If you dont pay back then some honest hardworking person loses his savings. When we ignored the basic laws of economics we had a mortgage crisis and thousands of people lost their savings and jobs.

"...some hardworking person loses their savings" No they don't. Loans are insured against default. Interest rates more than cover extremely low default rates and then some.

Clearly you don't understand banking.

Re: The careless errors of credit reporting agencies

#225
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Citi gave me a credit card with a $3,000 limit as a college freshmen. How old are you? Just a few years ago, despite making a very decent amount of money and having no marks on my credit, it took an entire year for me to get a credit card. Reason: lack of credit history. A lot of people have similar stories. >This depends on your definitions a little bit. The part where you spend money that isn't yours and then pay…

I have a about $90k~ worth of available credit to me on my CC's alone. How many cards do you have? I understand it's mostly theoretical but I'm wondering why would anyone want to use their high-interest credit card to borrow even a few tens of thousands? Or any high-interest vehicle of debt for that much money, for that matter.

I didn't ask for them. I have 4 total. Two when I got when I was first starting out. I have two cards which comprise the bulk of my credit (one from American Express and the other Chase), which represent ~50% of that $90k. Both have credit limits around $20-25k.

>but I'm wondering why would anyone want to use their high-interest credit card to borrow even a few tens of thousands?

I don't know, but I'm sure as heck not going to utilize them that much! I am sure the credit issuers wish I did though.

Re: The careless errors of credit reporting agencies

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you are trusted by definition I felt pretty "trusted by definition." Citi gave me a credit card with a $3,000 limit as a college freshmen. A few years later I had an $8,000 limit card and a $10,000 limit card. I bought my car certified-pre-owned under a program that writes favorable low-cost loans to recent college graduates with no or limited credit history (with an offer letter or paystubs). You just aren't truste…

It sounds like you are at least ten years out of college. Federal regulations have changed and now it is more difficult for a college student to access credit cards

Graduated this year, Citi literally handed me a $5000 limit with minimal history (I had a credit card I used ~100 times across 4 years of college) and basically told me to go nuts.

Re: The careless errors of credit reporting agencies

#227
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious why you think that is absurdly backwards. Not necessarily disagreeing, but it's not hard to justify wanting to see a history of repayment vs trusting by default.

It's absurdly backwards because it's asking you to create debt which normally is the opposite of showing you are good with money and I would question the validity of seeing people paying back limited debt to be indicative of ex. borrowing for a house. You could instead just look at the history of their debit card usage to figure out whether they are trustworthy. As I said though I understand why they do it, it's just…

>It's absurdly backwards because it's asking you to create debt which normally is the opposite of showing you are good with money

The American economy, and largely the world economy is based on accusation of debt.

If everyone in the US, or other First world nations simply started living with in their means, never incurring debt the entire of the world economy was cease.

Thus the credit system is design to reward people that acquire more and more debt and punish people that save or live frugal life styles with in their means

The modern economy depends on a person gathering debt from their 18th birthday until their death, where the assets of their life are then sold to cover those debts ensuring the next generation also has to acquire debt repeating the cycle.

Re: The careless errors of credit reporting agencies

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Citi gave me a credit card with a $3,000 limit as a college freshmen. How old are you? Just a few years ago, despite making a very decent amount of money and having no marks on my credit, it took an entire year for me to get a credit card. Reason: lack of credit history. A lot of people have similar stories. >This depends on your definitions a little bit. The part where you spend money that isn't yours and then pay…

>Credit card management has no indication how I'll manage a loan (whether a house or car) due to the nature of spending and utilization I think the actuary-types who design the scoring models would disagree vehemently with this one. Scoring models are built from regressions on actual default rates.

Considering renting history is not accurately reported in any meaningful form, I don't know how they disagree with me. Most people probably aren't willing to give up their car, I'd figure those that have credit issues are still most likely making car payments.

It's one thing to say "I see you've been late on a few of your car payments, so we're going to give a higher interest rate." and it's something else to say "You have a few unpaid medical bills/late CC payments so we're going to give you a higher interest rate on this car loan."

I just have a hard time really believing that is the case. Often credit issuers simply look at the totality of everything, instead of appropriately looking the history of the specific financial contract they're wanting to issue.

Re: The careless errors of credit reporting agencies

#229
If only every person could have a unique identifier that could be used everywhere as a primary key, so "name matches" weren't needed...

Social security number as globally unique ID would actually improve security and accuracy in most areas of life!

But numbers. Scary! What if I actually have something to hide?

Re: The careless errors of credit reporting agencies

#230
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...some hardworking person loses their savings" No they don't. Loans are insured against default. Interest rates more than cover extremely low default rates and then some.

Clearly you don't understand banking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_default_swap?wprov=sfsi...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateral_protection_insuranc...

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/022416/why-ba...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Economic_Stabilizati...

Clearly you spend more time attempting to belittle than understand the conversation.

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