Crazy Credit Gods

[Anonymous]

Help me understand!!!!!  From what I can gather the only way to get your true FICO Scores are to have your lender pull your credit?  Once they pull your credit it negatively affects your score?  I want to know how someone emailing over a credit score affects my ability to pay my bills, its my credit score I own it and now because somebody accessed "my" credit score I can't pay my bills for some reason??? The mythical credit world is frustrating and makes zero sense, its a multi-billion dollar industry based on falsehoods and make believe numbers that you yourself can't access.  My score dropped because I had someone pull my credit so I would know where I stood because I had cleaned up alot of issues and paid down all of my cards.  Now I'm told I paid them down too far?  Really??? So somebody accessing my credit (doesn't affect my ability to pay) drops my score, but leaving more debt on my cards (which does affect my ability to pay) would have increased my score?  That is so azz backwards I'm not sure what to believe anymore.  VERY FRUSTRATED and about to give up on trying to buy a home ever.

[Anonymous]

Any help out there?  I'm just looking for logical reasons as to why a phone call and not true debt affects my credit score?

[jamie123]

Okay, relax a bit.

Every time a lender pulls your score it counts as an inquiry. It will slightly reduce your score for 1 year. You can buy your Equifax and Trans Union scores here at myFICO and it will NOT affect your credit at all.

So, what are your scores?

What are you attempting to do?

[Anonymous]

Trying to get pre-approved for a home loan.

EQ - 597

EX - 613

TU - 618

I have $27 balance total on 3 credit cards

I have a $9500 car loan

That is all of my debt.

[jamie123]

Your scores tell me you have a lot of negative information still on your reports. Just paying off old bad debts does absolutely nothing to your credit scores, good or bad. You need to actually have the bad information REMOVED from your reports.

You have a couple of things going in your favor right now. You have 3 credit cards and the auto loan. You need to start demonstrating PERFECT credit behavior from here on out. You need to pay your credit card balances online if you already haven't started doing so. You need to GENTLY use your cards each month and make sure you go online SEVERAL days before their payment due date and PAY THEM OFF IN FULL! Do not carry balances on these cards. (But you still need to use them!)

Make sure you make your auto loan payment on time or a few days early.

Now for the fun stuff....

You need to go to annualcreditreport.com and get all 3 of your credit reports. THIS WILL NOT AFFECT YOUR SCORE! You get 1 copy from each agency for free once a year. Print out these reports so you can refer to them in the next step.

You will now be able to read your reports and identify all the baddies that you will now try removing. Start with the newest baddies first and work back to the oldest. Any bad information that is less than 2 years old has a HUGE negative impact to your scores.

You will need to visit the CREDIT REBUILDING forum here and do some research in how to have the baddies removed. Some of the methods you will learn about are:

PFD: Pay for Delete

DV: Debt Validation

GW: Good Will

I know it sounds like a lot of work but it really isn't that hard once you get going. It really comes down to doing a little work and then a lot of waiting for responses. Then doing it all again.

You REALLY are not in as bad of shape as a lot of people that visit these forums. Most people start this process when they have absolutely no credit and have to worry about getting credit cards AND having their baddies removed.

After you get your reports you can stop back here and I can help formulate a plan of attack and answer any questions you might have. I'm sure you will have some questions.

I have no idea of what kind of problems you have on your reports but in 2 to 3 months you may be able to drastically improve your scores. You need to let me know what you find on your reports for a better answer.

[Anonymous]

Yes I totally agree with you on that note !!,

The system is fraud like allot of the other government controlled issue's out there.

They claim that its not and its perfectly flawd proof. well if that's the case then let us see the "mechanics" behind the scoring system from eq,trans etc.

Yes tell the "sheep" how they come up with these fictitious numbers.

If they were not fraud then they should easily be able to release the program that calculates our "fico" scores right ?.

the information is highly classified and protected, if they released it then 99% of America would sue for a fraud system.

[Cloudlb]

yes, there are inequities and frustrations in the "system" and it can suck a great deal.  Like life.  But educate yourself, learn to work with the system, and be patient.  It can be done. 

[jeffriesde]

In response to your question about how someone emailing over your credit score affects your ability to pay a bill.  For the lender to pull your credit scores they must initiate an application process, hence FICO looks at it as an attempt to obtain a mortgage.  If you were to obtain that mortgage, then that could affect your ability to pay your bills.

If you pull your own credit report through here or a CMS that is not viewed as you trying to obtain credit, so it does not affect your ability to pay your bills.

The system is very flawed as has been stated.  But it is what our society has come to.  Basing decisions off of generalization and stereotypes.  If person A, B, and C did all of this, then person D will do it as well.

Also if the criteria were released for exactly how FICO's are calculated then it would be easy for someone to game the system, and would make FICO's null and void.  People are already doing it to some extent.  We know that keeping INQ's down, UTIL between 1-9%, at least 3 accounts with some variety, could get you the best possible score.  We also know that a collection counts the same if it is Paid or Not (for scoring purposes).

It is better to work on getting your credit file in the best possible order and not worry so much about the specific score. Scores can change daily, and are only relevant on the day you are trying to obtain credit.