Dear myFICO friends,
I recently received an email from Alliant day before yesterday confirmation that my loan denial is based on a below 600 FICO score, which is a total lie and I provided evidence as such – now I have questions. Here me out….
Recently sometime back in December I applied for a personal loan at Alliant Credit Union and they approved me for only two of the three types of Personal Loans they offer (I could be wrong, but I believe that’s what it was – I’ll have to check my emails). The “Secured” loan is what they offered me along with their Visa Credit card of x-amount, both very low, when I attempted to apply for the Unsecured Loan (for reasons being, I know it’s the lesser desirable option, but that’s okay). I was told they used Equifax to determine the outcome. I did not accept their offers because their offers were not conducive to the goals my fiancée and I had. I could not afford to tie up current funds (the secured loan option) to then have Alliant offer me the equal amount in lending for the amount that was tied up. For every dollar you pay off the loan, that same dollar amount from your frozen cash becomes available to you – your own money. I needed to have access to my then-current-funds in addition to more cash on top of that.
This is where it all gets interesting. Equifax was also used when Chase denied me the Freedom Rewards Credit Card. I investigated why Equifax threw me under the bus. I saw there was a red flag in “collections”, which was not rightfully mine; even though it showed that the debt was satisfactorily paid off. I battled between Equifax and the collection agency all day, opened up a formal investigation, 30-days later Equifax deleted the entry in my account and my FICO score shot up just under 50 points. I used to have a 730+ EQ score, lost my job, score dropped to 628, got a job, score rose to 624 with red flag in place, but 624 was fixed & did not budge from there. Got the red flag removed upon the closure of the investigation, EQ score rose to 673 almost overnight, dropped 11 pts to 662, and then recently rose up 4 pts to 666. My other two FICO scores are considerably higher, knocking on Mr. Number 7.
Months later I called again asking to speak to a Loan Officer for an unsecured personal loan. This lady refuses to transfer me, tried to up-sell me these other products after I told her that TWICE in the past I’ve denied them. She was extremely assertive in stating that she needed to re-touch those topics with me even though I told her I was going to refuse, but she would not transfer me to a loan officer like I asked in the beginning unless she tried. I let her run through the whole script – I denied them all. I know the unsecured personal loan comes with an interest rate – I know this, but there’s a reason to the madness why I’m seeking specifically the unsecured personal loan and I have very good reason why I denied the auto-refinance, the Visa card, etc. She argued with me that she didn’t understand why I was insisting going the route I requested and by the time I was fed up and done, she said she could transfer me. I stated that my lunch hour was over and that she wasted my lunch time which resulted in me never having to have spoken to a live Loan Officer on that day. Her response was that she would notate on my account that the next time I called in to speak to a LO that no one should bother me with those other questions. I re-applied online this time (7 months later from last application) because I was disheartened with the previous experience recently of the phone call, I called and spoke to a LO to confirm that the online application went through, he assured me a COUNTER-OFFER would be made if not approved, I got an email of denial from another loan officer (a lady), NO such counter-offer was made, I emailed her back and challenged that I was approved months ago but for a lower amount I did not desire, she said that my score back then was above 600 and now came back as being LOWER than that 600 (I can furnish the proof of email), I went and PAID for current FICO scores on all 3 credit bureaus and re-emailed her with a screenshot attachment showing that someone is lying and then I told her I feel discriminated against based on my last rough encounter with the last girl whom I shot down all the efforts she made after much debate. Now I feel they’re mad at me and making up stuff about my score that is clearly not true based on my true FICO evidence that I’ve provided. I then left her a voicemail.
Whole business day goes by and no response.
I found a manager’s contact info and I found a VP’s name – I’m thinking of taking this up top.
Have any of you had something like this happen? Where can I complain?
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**UPDATE**
After submitting this she replied just now stating that Alliant Credit Union uses the "Equifax Pinnacle 2.0" scoring model, which I found out is based on FICO anyway. So if back in December my unadulterated FICO EQ score was 624, then EQ Pinnacle score was at a certain number, right? If my unadulterated FICO EQ score rose to 673, wouldn't EQ Pinnacble 2.0 score have risen as well?
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**UPDATE #2** - so I went to obtain Equifax's own unique score based on their scoring model, Pinnacle, and it's a 632. Still above the "below 600" that was proposed.
