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Credit Karma fined $3M by FTC for misleading consumers with credit card offers

thefintechtimes.com

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Re: Credit Karma fined $3M by FTC for misleading consumers with credit card offers

#91

Post by karatinversion »

sabman83 wrote: post #89
notinfuriated wrote: post #87

Having worked at CK, specifically on personal loans, I'm going to with Hanlon's razor here. ( Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. ) Not saying the fine isn't warranted, it is. CK was a place where things were so complex (perhaps needlessly) you couldn't find anyone to explain what was going on. On this topic, you could ask people on the data team how their models worked (to dete…

Having worked in CK, I can vouch for the same view about the data science team. It was shocking how bad they were.

Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice, to coin a phrase; which is why many laws have an “intentionally or recklessly” clause

Re: Credit Karma fined $3M by FTC for misleading consumers with credit card offers

#92

Post by matwood »

distantaidenn wrote: post #70
NavinF wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have no reason to believe the credit reporting services are aware of my physical location So did you lie about your address on the credit card application? If not, that’s how the bank knows you don’t live in the US and that’s why you were rejected. Lemme simply: Either you need credit history in the US or you need to live in the US. You fail both criteria. Maybe your rejection letter only mentions the first reason,…

You seem hostile. Not sure if it's your intention, but ease up. > So did you lie about your address on the credit card application? If not, that’s how the bank knows you don’t live in the US and that’s why you were rejected. I didn't lie on anything, and frankly a bit offended you would even assume such. I travel back and forth to the US, often. My home address (one of the properties my family owns, and where I lived…

The models are complex and get data from many sources. If we assume they really do believe you live in the US, then it's odd for you to suddenly pop up and want a credit card with no other credit. Students get credit cards b/c they are student age and fit a risk model. It sounds like you're older.

Is your name on any of the house items like utility bills, deeds, etc...? Where do you pay taxes? How do you pay for things while living outside the US? Are you employed by a US company?

Keep in mind the people you speak to on the phone have no idea what goes into the model. They mostly read the same score/rejection that you do. My guess is the model is picking up signals you aren't in the US and that's causing the rejection.

Re: Credit Karma fined $3M by FTC for misleading consumers with credit card offers

#93

Post by daniel-cussen »

distantaidenn wrote: post #33

I have zero debt. Absolutely zero. However, I left the States soon after graduating university, and thus also have (had) no credit history there. Since I've been planning to return soon, I've been trying to build a history, so when the time comes, I can get a mortgage loan. The process of building a credit history has been enlightening and frustrating. I'm in the tech world, as most people in this forum is as well. I…

So your mistake is thinking, they have trademarks, they're American, they have documents are well formatted, no type-os, the advertise, they're incorporated, and more than anything they have money.

But it's not like similar industries.

It's the industry of treating you like shit. You are biomass to them, they want 20% interest while paying 1% interest (like two years ago), you can't compare saying it's a 19% spread what it is is the 18th power of the interest they pay. That's very abnormal historically, most usurers in the Middle Ages getting the whole town to kill them for their avarice had much skinnier spreads. 18th power is very unusual. Stretches out their time by a factor of 18. It's like street businesses, like crack dealing or pimping, which perpetually insult the people who are the foundation of their wealth.

Re: Credit Karma fined $3M by FTC for misleading consumers with credit card offers

#94

Post by flaviut »

uptown wrote: post #90
avg_dev wrote: post #83

Things I think are worth noting: 1. Intuit owns Credit Karma > Intuit has lobbied extensively against the IRS providing taxpayers with free pre-filled forms, as is the norm in developed countries.[108][11][109] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuit 2. Intuit owns Mailchimp. Mailchump was hacked earlier this year. > In a scant blog post dated August 12, just two days after the company’s co-founder and long-time CEO B…

Didn’t realize Intuit owned Mailchimp. It one online tool whose UX I hate with a passion. Mint comes close. What are some good alternatives to Mint for financial account aggregation?

I use Lunch Money: https://lunchmoney.app/

I have a referral link as well, but use the link above if you're not comfortable with that: https://lunchmoney.app/?refer=9tdo95yk

Re: Credit Karma fined $3M by FTC for misleading consumers with credit card offers

#95

Post by PascLeRasc »

uptown wrote: post #90
avg_dev wrote: post #83

Things I think are worth noting: 1. Intuit owns Credit Karma > Intuit has lobbied extensively against the IRS providing taxpayers with free pre-filled forms, as is the norm in developed countries.[108][11][109] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuit 2. Intuit owns Mailchimp. Mailchump was hacked earlier this year. > In a scant blog post dated August 12, just two days after the company’s co-founder and long-time CEO B…

Didn’t realize Intuit owned Mailchimp. It one online tool whose UX I hate with a passion. Mint comes close. What are some good alternatives to Mint for financial account aggregation?

Look at Monarch Money and Copilot. Both are designed quite well.

Re: Credit Karma fined $3M by FTC for misleading consumers with credit card offers

#96

Post by svnt »

karatinversion wrote: post #91
sabman83 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked in CK, I can vouch for the same view about the data science team. It was shocking how bad they were.

Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice, to coin a phrase; which is why many laws have an “intentionally or recklessly” clause

Both essentially come back to the same underlying idea: the egregious lack of concern.

Re: Credit Karma fined $3M by FTC for misleading consumers with credit card offers

#97

Post by PascLeRasc »

NavinF wrote: post #60
distantaidenn wrote: post #33

I have zero debt. Absolutely zero. However, I left the States soon after graduating university, and thus also have (had) no credit history there. Since I've been planning to return soon, I've been trying to build a history, so when the time comes, I can get a mortgage loan. The process of building a credit history has been enlightening and frustrating. I'm in the tech world, as most people in this forum is as well. I…

> I've been planning to return soon > However, I qualify for zero unsecured credit cards. That’s normal. You don’t live in the US so American banks have zero recourse if you decide to default. For comparison, I had a very easy time getting 3 unsecured cards back when I was a 18 year old student with nearly zero income. It also helped that I had checking/savings accounts with the same banks and years of deposit histor…

The credit agencies could start requiring you to drink piss to apply for a card and folks here would immediately be talking about how that's normal and you should just refer to a subreddit flowchart for which agencies are the most watered down.

Re: Credit Karma fined $3M by FTC for misleading consumers with credit card offers

#98

Post by svnt »

refurb wrote: post #86
tpxl wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't any judge see right through such bullshit?

Antitrust is notoriously hard to prove. It often comes down to intent. Internal documents and how the company talks about business decisions can be enough to sway minds in a situation where you’re trying to convince a judge/jury what the company was thinking. Clearly if you’re trying to put a competitor out of business then calling it a “team room” won’t matter one bit.

Is this true? Given monopolistic consequences are structural and inevitable, it seems the law should be enforced on structure and function and not require deliberate intent.

Re: Credit Karma fined $3M by FTC for misleading consumers with credit card offers

#99

Post by Somatochlora »

np- wrote: post #85
gruez wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I wouldn't be surprised to find that 90% is actually very close to reality The FTC press release[1] says "for many offers, almost a third of consumers who applied were in fact denied". That's quite a ways off from 90%. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/09/... edit: >Also, Credit Karma gets paid for successful conversions, and maybe ad placement? It doesn't seem like misleading someone got…

This still seems a bit dubious—-90% of people who view the ad being qualified doesn’t mean in any way that 90% of applicants will be successful. If you have more applicants from that bottom 10% pool who click on the ad to proceed, then it would be statistically very easy to end up with a reject rate much higher than 10%.

If you reject a third of applicants, the 90% figure is obviously misleading even if technically true in some sense.

Re: Credit Karma fined $3M by FTC for misleading consumers with credit card offers

#100

Post by cmeacham98 »

philsnow wrote: post #78
cmeacham98 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first paragraph is largely true if you're able to make a down payment (your car depreciates a ton as soon as you drive it off the lot, lenders will be much more willing to lend if amount of the loan is less than the value of the car sold _used_). The second is close to true, but you should actually leave a little over one month's payment, not $1. This SE answer explains it better than I ever could: https://money…

Do you have any idea having two new car loans improves your credit score any more than having one new car loan? OP might have enough income / savings to not be bothered at the idea of buying two new cars (they don't have to be Bentleys, people take out loans on Civics too). My gut says that having two of the same age wouldn't be much/any better than one, but then again it's the credit industry and my intuition has bi…

Basically, yes: the returns are diminishing.

There are two types of debt (for the purposes of your credit score): revolving (you regularly borrow money and pay it back, like a credit card) and fixed (you borrow a lump sum and make regular payments).

Just having any type of fixed debt at all (car loan, mortgage, even a personal loan) is a huge boost to your score. Thus, a second car loan will make much less of an impact because OP would already be getting this boost from their first loan. (Similarly, having any type of revolving debt at all provides a boost, so for anybody new to the credit score game try to get any shitty credit card that will approve yoy and buy at least one thing with it each statement).

On top of that, getting approved for a second car loan (at the same time) is wayyyy harder than the first. I have no idea why this is, as the economics should be the same, but maybe lenders have some data that shows people with two car loans are more likely to default or something.

I generally wouldn't recommend this strategy to OP unless they were already going to buy a second car for a spouse/family member/etc. Cars depreciate very quickly even if you don't use them at all and the score boost won't be very big.

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