Langley Federal Credit Union

[Kasuito39]

What if you freeze your Lexis Nexis reports? Will this enable you to by pass the security questions Lexis Nexis causing the CRA to rely only on the data they already have of you?

[Anonymous]

New 5% categories

[Gonzozap]

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@BigBS wrote:

Based on AJC's DPs and those of others that I could find decided to pull the trigger.  Here are my data points for Langley.  Applied for membership late on the evening of 20 Dec and they pulled EQ (797 after pull with 12 INQs) with 6 figure income.  Membership approved early afternoon of the 21st and applied for the Cash Back VISA Sig card and Line of Credit.  Got a call Saturday morning (22 Dec)  notifying me I was approved for both (Cash Back VISA - $25K/11.25% APR, LOC - $10K).  Received the card on Saturday, 29 Dec.  Look forward to building the relationship with them as the customer service seemed superb in the 2 situations of dealing with them.

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Nice!  Does Langley require income verification?

[Gonzozap]

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@DaveInAZ wrote:

There's a post in Auton loans, "Langley FCU - worst customer service ever?" who said after sucessfully joining Langley a month before he app'd for a car loan refi and kept getting declined for "not eligible for membership" and couldn't get past that even after calling in and the rep confirmed he was a member. I'll pass on Langley, I have enough CU accounts.

As for security questions, even though they're pulling EQ for credit report for identity verification they likely could be using Lexis Nexis or similar that has much more info on you than the CRAs. I get asked questions about my sister who lives in Ohio, where I grew up, but we're not close and I haven't seen her in over 10 years, Lexis Nexis connects us from our parent's address in Ohio in the 1980s. And I recently failed a question about the name of a neighborhood where I lived, I answered None of the Above and Gong! Wrong!. Later I remembered that the area where my house in Vegas was, where I lived in the 1990s, was known as Paradise Palms, one of the choices, even though my mailing address was Las Vegas.

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Justice Federal Credit Union did the "Lexis Nexis" thing with me.  Lexis had some crazy stuff in its files from as far back as 35 years for me.  All kinds of WRONG, confusing information.  I requested a copy of my report and THE REPORT WAS 181 PAGES LONG.  Blew me away.  It had my name crossed up with names of relatives and a past tenant.  Addresses where I never lived.  Court cases that did not involve me.  It was unbelievable.  Basically, Lexis has gathered every solitary piece of (mis)information out there on the internet and everywhere else and they are selling it.  And then LN said they were unable to correct the wrong info "because it came from other sources."  I went back and forth with them for about 6 months.  Not until I threatened a lawsuit did they get on the ball. But even so, I placed a freeze on my LN report.  I do not trust them.

Lexis works in concert with a company called Accurint.  Be aware that both companies say they are NOT a Consumer Reporting Agency and other outside organizations cannot use info from Lexis files to grant or deny credit, make employment decisions, etc.  Lexis admitted to me that it is a fine line between using the info to verify identity vs using it to deny credit.

Be VERY afraid of Lexis Nexis.

[Anonymous]

Will add to this thread, I froze 10 or more credit bureau and information gathers and when it came to verification on a credit card they were using information that had absolutely nothing to do with me. Even asked the color of my car and the choices were all wrong! Fortunately, I pointed out to the person doing verification that the questions did not apply to me and the multiple choice answers were bogus.

She then moved directly to the credit bureau report pull and asked questions from the report. At least I was able to pass that and then told me the results would be passed on to the right people. Was approved shortly there after.

My point? There may be some difficulty in getting real world questions to verify the person applying. On the other hand, how can you deal with information off of 182 page LexisNexis Report. Mine is 52 pages and if they do address verifications there are several addresses the same except for a letter or number (how do we know?).

Well all food for thought.

[AverageJoesCredit]

At time of approval, i did include paystubs as poi. Im on the lower end of things so ill never see preapproval offersfor credit and ill have to be content with 1 credit card. I asked if people can have 2 , rhey said yes but i didnt qualify. To my average ears , means i dont make enough lol

[CreditCuriosity]

I might add they have supposedly a 30% DTI rule as well if you are above that you are wasting a pull.. Spend a good 20 mins on with an analyst several months back talking about their criteria as they denied me a CC back in January with a 780+ eq score due to "does not meet UW requirements".  My DTI was at 35ish% at time and now i think 32%ish approx.  Keep in mind that considers Student loans, house, cars, etc...  I earn a good income (6 figures), but with that said I have a house payment, car payment, SL's(still) and a very small amount of CC debt.  It came down to indebtness/DTI ratio.. I think 30% or below is VERY conservative for any lender especially a CU.  Each CU has their oddities though and this appears to be one of langley's.  Just something else to keep in mind if you want to have a loan/cc with Langley.  We spent that 20 mins going through my report they pulled in january and talking about it.  Nice conversation, but it will be another 6 months or whatever before ill be below that 30% threshold if that is really "true".

With all that said I have a very SMALL direct deposit from paycheck going to them as UW changes from time to time with various FI's and figure it isnt hurting me keeping a free checking/savings open for possible future stuff.

[Gonzozap]

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@CreditCuriosity wrote:

I might add they have supposedly a 30% DTI rule as well if you are above that you are wasting a pull.. Spend a good 20 mins on with an analyst several months back talking about their criteria as they denied me a CC back in January with a 780+ eq score due to "does not meet UW requirements".  My DTI was at 35ish% at time and now i think 32%ish approx.  Keep in mind that considers Student loans, house, cars, etc...  I earn a good income (6 figures), but with that said I have a house payment, car payment, SL's(still) and a very small amount of CC debt.  It came down to indebtness/DTI ratio.. I think 30% or below is VERY conservative for any lender especially a CU.  Each CU has their oddities though and this appears to be one of langley's.  Just something else to keep in mind if you want to have a loan/cc with Langley.  We spent that 20 mins going through my report they pulled in january and talking about it.  Nice conversation, but it will be another 6 months or whatever before ill be below that 30% threshold if that is really "true".

With all that said I have a very SMALL direct deposit from paycheck going to them as UW changes from time to time with various FI's and figure it isnt hurting me keeping a free checking/savings open for possible future stuff.

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Good to know.

NFCU pulled the DTI rule for me.  They said my CLI was limited cuz I was at the max DTI.   Frankly, I just did not buy that excuse.  Call it intuition.

[Anonymous]

Credit unions care about DTI far more than big banks, this is not a surprise at all. Big banks want you to be deep in debt because that’s how they make their money. Credit unions are only as successful as their members so they have a more vested interest in keeping them above water.

[Gonzozap]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Credit unions care about DTI far more than big banks, this is not a surprise at all. Big banks want you to be deep in debt because that’s how they make their money. Credit unions are only as successful as their members so they have a more vested interest in keeping them above water.

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Oh, I totally agree and understand Saeren.  Not at all trying to say that CUs are never concerned about DTI.  CUs are completely different financial entities than banks. I just didn't buy it in my case - mainly because it did not add up.  Even if I were to max out all my cards, combined with all other debt, my DTI would only be 19%.  Being an ex-mortgage broker, I know that creditors will sometimes deny credit for a reason they want to keep to themselves.  In my case, I think it "may" be self-employment.