TheCRA's have a class action lawsuit against them because...

[Anonymous]

TheCRA's have a class action lawsuit against them because they allow Capital One to NOTreport a credit limit.  This can affect a consumers score by as much as 50 points!!!!

 Here is an excerpt from an article in the Washington Post:

Say your most recent balance on the card was $2,000. That appears to be a very high usage of credit when your substitute limit is just $2,500, not the actual $5,000. Now you appear to have a utilization ratio of 80 percent and your credit score could be depressed significantly -- 20 to 50 points or more -- according to Terry Clemans, executive director of the National Credit Reporting Association.

A 50-point decrease could mean a 1 percentage point difference in your mortgage rate quote, according to Fair Isaac's MyFico.com Web site. On a $216,000 fixed-rate, 30-year mortgage last week, an applicant with a 660 FICO would typically be quoted 7.07 percent, or $1,447 a month in principal and interest. An applicant with a 610 FICO would be quoted 8.05 percent, with a payment of $1,592, or $145 more.

[Anonymous]

Interesting. I would think the lawsuit would be against Capital One since the CRA's only report what's given to them. It's really Capital One's fault for not reporting it...

[Anonymous]

Cap One ought to have a million lawsuits against them.  The reasoning is that the CRA's are defaulting the credit limit to $0.  This makes it appear like a consumer is maxed out or very close to their limit.  The CRA's base their scoring system on available credit among other things.  Cap One uses this against the consumer to prevent them from obtaining credit elsewhere.  There are no laws in place to prevent Cap One's unethical practices, but the CRA's are held to the "Fair Isaac Credit" reporting laws.  They are in violation by allowing Cap One to get away with it.

[Anonymous]

Interesting...we might just be seeing CapOne report limits by the end of the year after all, if Fair-Isaac and the Big Three start leaning on them.

Again, this gets back to my number one beef with the credit reporting system: lack of standards for data that is reported. The CRAs need to demand anyone reporting data to them do so completely, with all relevant data fields filled in. If the DMV can demand it when I go register my car, so can the Big Three CRAs.