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Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

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Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#441

Post by craftinator »

calny wrote: post #407
harryh wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that it's extremely likely that the number of people who opt out will be quite small, it's hard to imagine such an undertaking getting off the ground.

Class action lawyer here and respectfully disagree. "Numerosity" of members is a class action prerequisite, but it's usually met if over 40 class members exist. In this huge (over 100m ppl), controversial settlement, well over 40 people will likely opt out, so "numerosity" shouldn't be a problem. The bigger question is whether the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCPs) allow a second class action, by individuals th…

Thank you for commenting, it's great hearing from someone with domain knowledge on this case!

Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#442

Post by AnthonyMouse »

sokoloff wrote: post #433
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Existing land owners, home builders, and mortgage lenders are most certainly not better off if people only buy houses with cash. The existing land owners are probably the biggest real opposition now, though they wouldn't be any worse off if we had done the right thing to begin with, because then they'd have paid less from the start too. It could be worth a one-time cost of paying them off in some way. It's debatabl…

People who are buying houses with 3% down payments are unlikely to be able to buy a house for cash for 3% of current prices. That's the sense in which they may be shut out of home ownership. One of the most consistent and reliable means to lift oneself from the low end of middle class to squarely middle class has been the leveraged purchasing of property in a city that continues to grow. Taking a 3% or 5% downpayment…

People buying houses with 3% down payments are generally paying such high interest rates that they don't get to enjoy the home price appreciation because they're paying it all in interest to the bank. Meanwhile they're taking the risk that the house doesn't appreciate faster than inflation, or at all, as was the case for people who bought homes in cities like Detroit. And the bank will want enough interest to cover the risk that the home value declines and they default on the loan, which means many such people are paying more to own than they would to rent, even after including the accumulation of equity.

Homes appreciating faster than inflation is also an unsustainable trend in general. The result has been for housing costs in those areas to increase as a percent of wages, which obviously can't continue indefinitely because the result would be housing costs that don't leave enough for other necessities like food, or that exceed wages outright.

It's true prices probably wouldn't fall to only 3% of what they are now and so the same people couldn't purchase the same house immediately, but rents would fall along with housing costs. The combination of lower housing costs and less paid in interest on huge high-risk loans would allow the same people to own the same house outright in less time, even if it meant renting it for some period of time first. And of course the money they intend to use to buy the house could in the be earning interest before they reach the threshold to buy the house without a loan, which (if the efficient market hypothesis is correct) would give the same risk-adjusted returns in the meantime as investing the same amount in home ownership.

Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#443

Post by JJMcJ »

mikeash wrote: post #251
patio11 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This statement, which is currently greyed out, is an objective statement of engineering fact about one of the most important technologies introduced in the last one hundred years. I hope I have bought enough street cred to say the following by ghostwriting hundreds of letters to the credit reporting agencies to fix their problems, which are numerous and essentially inevitable given their model and present operations.…

It’s effectively for free, except for the massive society wide risk of fraud that they’ve foisted upon all of us. The stuff looks cheap because, like any polluting industry, the price does not reflect the true cost. Surely there’s some third alternative other than “incompetent credit bureaus enable fraud” and “minorities have bad access to credit because lenders are super racist”?

> It’s effectively for free, except for

Also except for the risk that financial problems will force a cardholder into accruing interest, and often that interest will get a lot worse if payments are missed a 5% card changes into a 22% card if more than some number of payments are late and some number may be just 1.

Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#444

Post by pas »

elcomet wrote: post #420
pas wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they offer the credit to incentivize you to make the purchase right now, don't think about how to pay it now, because ... you can just pay it over a year. And it's perfectly okay for example if you just bought a new flat and you're broke as fuck, because you spent all your cash on must-repair stuff, like getting the plumbing in order, but you also fancy a new bed, because you have none, so interest free bed it is…

But why do the banks do it if they don't get any interest? It seems they are just loosing money here.

Have you seen eg. Germany's bond yields? They are negative. People love safe money parking, they don't want to take risks, manage investments, oversee companies, fiddle with product development, bet on innovation, think about market fit. So they do the next best thing, try to come up with minimal risk minimal profit financial products, and that's what these furniture/fridge/oven loans are.

Furthermore the shop pays some service fee to the loan provider, and thus they scrape by.

Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#445

Post by lostlogin »

rubyskills wrote: post #395
lostlogin wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit scores are bs. My credit isn’t good. I’ve paid a lifetime total of approximately 10c (attempting to convert to $US) interest on credit cards and have never missed a bill - I pay them off before they arrive. 90%+ of my payments are credit card. My score reflects something other than my likelihood of paying back debt.

Have you tried asking for credit limit increases on all of your cards? You may be going over your utilization ratio (typically anything over 30% will deal I your credit score down) of your credit limits are too low.

I have actively tried to keep the limit low, as I don’t need even halve my current limit, so maybe this is the problem.

I like the limit to be low as it limits the potential for damage if anyone gets hold of it and the bank doesn’t cover the loss. Possibly a needless concern though.

Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#446

Post by sokoloff »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #442
sokoloff wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who are buying houses with 3% down payments are unlikely to be able to buy a house for cash for 3% of current prices. That's the sense in which they may be shut out of home ownership. One of the most consistent and reliable means to lift oneself from the low end of middle class to squarely middle class has been the leveraged purchasing of property in a city that continues to grow. Taking a 3% or 5% downpayment…

People buying houses with 3% down payments are generally paying such high interest rates that they don't get to enjoy the home price appreciation because they're paying it all in interest to the bank. Meanwhile they're taking the risk that the house doesn't appreciate faster than inflation, or at all, as was the case for people who bought homes in cities like Detroit. And the bank will want enough interest to cover t…

Houses don't have to appreciate at higher than inflation in order for them to create wealth; they just have been in many areas due to the overall economic expansion. They can appreciate more slowly than inflation and the effect of leverage can still give them cash-on-cash returns higher than inflation or alternative investments.

On a conventional mortgage with 20% down, if the house appreciates at 1% per year in a 2% per year inflation environment, a $100K house goes up by $1K each year. Someone who bought that house with $20K down sees a $1K gain on their $20K cash investment, for a 5% cash on cash return. They also have a place to live typically substantially cheaper than they were paying in rent. Obviously, where they increase even faster than inflation, this is wildly beneficial and if they decline much at all, it's terrible.

3% down mortgages seem to cost around 1.25% more than 20% down mortgages. It's about 1/8-1/4% on the base interest rate and 0.5%-1% for PMI. With a base interest rate on a 30-fixed around 4%, paying 5.25% on a 3% down mortgage is still a good deal IMO.

If landlords had to pay cash for rental properties, I'm not convinced that you'd see such a surplus of rental properties such that it would drive rents down significantly. Rents are driven by ability and willingness to pay. Many small landlords would be forced out of the supplying housing to others work. If landlords could borrow money to buy houses but owner occupants couldn't, I think you'd see a massive defection of the housing economy in favor of landlords.

Obviously, anyone could borrow on unsecured terms. It seems likely that medium and large landlords could exploit that (borrowing against the projected cash flows, but without using real estate as collateral for the loans) and that would also result in a large shift of power away from owner-occupants and small landlords.

Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#447

Post by jldugger »

josteink wrote: post #376
fluffything wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also a human being from planet earth, and if I'm ok with paying X in cash to buy something, and the other persons offers me paying it in interest-free rates, it would be stupid for me not to. Worst case, I move the cash to a 2% interest rate bank account and let it sit there. Best case, there are other investments I can make now with that capital, and end up paying less overall for whatever I was buying because h…

> if I'm ok with paying X in cash to buy something, and the other persons offers me paying it in interest-free rates, it would be stupid for me not to. Disagree. This severely complicates my economy. Instead just having X funds less available, I still have the same funds at disposal, but have to remember I owe X to Y which must be paid by Z. Even just once this makes the simple question “How much disposable funds do…

> Disagree. This severely complicates my economy.

Some online banks have virtual subaccounts, which let you 'hide' money from your main account, if that's the way you are tracking funds available.

> More than once and I will need a system to manage my own personal economy. That’s horrible!

You already have a system, and it sounds like it's 'ask the bank how much money I have'. In the not too distant past, checking accounts came with a checkbook that included a register for you to track your expenses, but I guess humanity has declined.

Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#448

Post by jrnichols »

em-bee wrote: post #430
p49k wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit checks are often required in job applications and almost always when renting a home; it’s not like you can opt out of those.

i have been renting in several countries, including the US and i have never been asked for a credit check, i have never seen or heard about that for jobs either. why would a job need a credit check? all i care is that you can do the work.

> why would a job need a credit check?

So they can weed applicants out. This is very common in the fire service. Applications can be 40 pages long and they want you to list each financial account, balances, limits, etc. It's ridiculous. But I know just why they're doing it. I also think such requirements are weeding out minority applicants.

Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#449

Post by joncrane »

eblanshey wrote: post #143
lioeters wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the New York Times: "Almost half the settlement — $300 million — will go toward American consumers who were harmed by the breach, according to settlement documents filed in federal court in Atlanta. The company also agreed to pay $275 million in fines to end investigations by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission and 48 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Ric…

> The company also agreed to pay $275 million in fines to end investigations by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission and 48 states, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Equifax's mess-up did damage to American citizens by exposing their information. Why isn't most, if not all, of the money going to them? "Fines to end investigations" just sounds like a bribe -- the governme…

The money is going to them, in the sense that a) the money will be used to strengthen protections against such a thing happening again, and catching others who do it and b) that's that much less money that CFPB has to get appropriated by Congress, so that much more taxpayer money available for other programs.

They're using the money for the public good.

Re: Equifax removed the $125 claim payout option after millions submitted claims

#450

Post by em-bee »

jrnichols wrote: post #448
em-bee wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i have been renting in several countries, including the US and i have never been asked for a credit check, i have never seen or heard about that for jobs either. why would a job need a credit check? all i care is that you can do the work.

> why would a job need a credit check? So they can weed applicants out. This is very common in the fire service. Applications can be 40 pages long and they want you to list each financial account, balances, limits, etc. It's ridiculous. But I know just why they're doing it. I also think such requirements are weeding out minority applicants.

sounds like a very shady and likely illegal thing to do
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