Any Class Action Lawsuits against FICO out there?

[Anonymous]

Interesting in suing or joining a class action suit against Fico....any advice? Lawyers that have done so?...Class action?....Let me know

[fused]

What happened? Why?

[Anonymous]

Nothing really happened other than I became aware that this FICO thing is nothing but consumer Fraud and needs to be stopped. It rally has little predictive power and is just used as justification for charging outrageous interest rates in reality its just pure slander to those like me who rarely finance tings.

[RobertEG]

Yeah, I ask the same....

I am not defending Fair Isaac, and I have no vested interest whatsoever in defending anyone.

But what in the world would a consumer suit, individual or class-action, against a company that produces and licenses credit scoring algorithms be based on?

Fair Isaac is primarily a vendor of intellectual property, in the form of the scoring algorithms that it produces, and then licenses to CRAs and various commercial clients.

Their intellectual property is protected under federal trade secret law, and is not in the public domain. It is hard to sue a ghost, protected by trade secrets.

I would suppose that any legal action involving Fair Isaac would be between them and their clients, the licensees of their products, and not the consumer.

I know that Fair Isaac was involved, in the past, with legal action involving the three CRAs that centered around the use, or misuse,of trade secret information held by Fair Isaac that was alleged to have been appropriated and used in the development by the CRAs of their Vantage scoring algorithms. 

Fair Isaac is not involved, in any way, in allegations of violation of reporting or disputes under the FCRA, or in debt collector violations of the FDCPA.

Those are consumer issues, charged to the CRAs and debt collecttors for compliance, and to the FTC for enforcement.

I have no idea of what individuak action, let alone any class action, that would be the subject of consumer legal action against Fair Isaac.

Pease elaborate.......

[RobertEG]

To say that FICO has no predictive merit is, to me, contrary to the fact that hundereds of thousands of creditors rely on the FICO risk analysis of debt repayment daily.

FICO does not, and never has, made any decisions on the grant or denial of credit. That is not their business.

FICO does not, and never has, marketed their product as a decisive evaluation of your total credit worthiness.

They simply market one tool for creditor use in making their decisions.  'FICO does not evaluate your total credit worthiness.  They dont consider your income, total debt, total assets, etc.  FICO is a single tool, based on millions of dollars of review of prior credit profiles, that enables them to predict liklihood of default, usually within the next two years. Some creditors may rely only on your FICO score, but that is their business decision in their lending determinations.

After an investment of millions of $ in obtaing access to millions of prior credit histories, and an investment of millions to use that information in generating predicttive risks of repayment, to say that they have no predictive value is, well, just plain...........

Terms such as fraud and slander are not used lightly,

If you are persistent in securing legal class action by others, I suggest that you first secure your own legal counsel who is willing to put your allegations into legal documents before attempting to secure the support of others..  I doubt that you will have much success.

[Anonymous]

Now this is amusing...FICO cheerleaders!!!...lol. Only in corporatist America...all part of their PR firms image maker "FICO is your friend". Anyhow, I did find another "less one sided forum last night so I will continue my posting there....LOTS of angry people there!. In short up yours FICO, its time for the American people to give back some of the misery you and your slander, fraud, and terribly flawed system has caused.

[MidnightVoice]

  Remember, be friendly and supportive 

I think you will find most of the people here have figured out that credit scores and credit worthiness are important to them, and want to know how to deal with money and credit in the best way possible to achieve thir goals.  Knowing how the FICO system works is part of that.  Like ANY statistical model it has good points and its bad points, and there will always be people who get worse (or better) scores than they deserve.  But learning how to play the game can be useful

[John1956]

All of what Midnightvoice said is true. However, I believe that the greatest flaw in this whole mechanism is that it takes TOO MUCH TIME to recover. I personally feel that it is CRUEL & UNUSUAL punishment. When one gets to a certain level (near the bottom) it becomes nearly impossible to do business like most everyone else. I think it's time that enough of the public gets SERIOUSLY angry about this and floods Congress, The White House, and whoever else that can FORCE some changes to all of this nonsense. The bottom line is still ultimately the same. Squeeze as much $$$ out of the people that corporate America can get away with. 

[RobertEG]

I hear all of you.

American economy is based on capitalism, and capitalism is based on greed.

It may not always be pretty, and it may hurt some, but it is, in my opinion, better than other economic systems.

The check against unbridled capitalism is Congress.  Sure, they are not a perfect institution, and many are there due primarily to their funds, and thus allegiance to and support of, the money holders.  But Congress has the authority to set rules.  They have regaulated against monopolies, and other checks on capitalistic abused.  That is what the FCRA and FDCPA are all about.  Checks and limits on creditors and debt collectors.

But that is the way the system works.  Rants and raves against the system are only relevant if directed to your Congressman.  What specific changes do you propose to the FCRA or the FDCPA? 

Posting of such raves on a user site such as this dont accomplish anything, other than a scream in the night..  Political involvement is the more proper, and productive avenue for reform.

Call your Congressman. Rave with him.  Legislative reform is the only real solution to the issues you contest.

[MidnightVoice]

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@John1956 wrote:

 However, I believe that the greatest flaw in this whole mechanism is that it takes TOO MUCH TIME to recover. I personally feel that it is CRUEL & UNUSUAL punishment. When one gets to a certain level (near the bottom) it becomes nearly impossible to do business like most everyone else.

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It is all based on statistics.  For those who are better than average at recovery, this is unfair.  For those that are worse than average get an unfair advantage.  Unfortunate but true