*FICO is a Scam*

[Anonymous]

OP, out of curiosity how long have you been educating yourself about credit, FICO scoring and the like?

I ask because when I first joined this forum 2 years ago I knew absolutely nothing and it took me 3-6 months before I really started to understand and accept all parts of the algorithm. At first I know I shared many of your views, but at the time like you I was coming from a place of a less than stellar profile. If you're still the early stage of your credit journey, I can assure you that over time you'll become much more understanding and accepting of the FICO algorithm.

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

I also want to reiterate that if you adjust your approach slightly, you can enlist the folks here as allies (rather than opponents).  If we move toward a practical discussion of exactly what is on your reports, the folks here can help you get much higher scores.

That may not be exactly what you want.  But if you can just focus on that aspect of your post (I wish I had better scores, dammit) we can really help you do that.

---

+1 Couldn't have said it better myself...

[Anonymous]

---

@Anonymous wrote:
OP, out of curiosity how long have you been educating yourself about credit, FICO scoring and the like?

I ask because when I first joined this forum 2 years ago I knew absolutely nothing and it took me 3-6 months before I really started to understand and accept all parts of the algorithm. At first I know I shared many of your views, but at the time like you I was coming from a place of a less than stellar profile. If you're still the early stage of your credit journey, I can assure you that over time you'll become much more understanding and accepting of the FICO algorithm.

---

I'm still learning about these scores with time I'll get much better no doubt.

[Anonymous]

To answer your question, my oldest line of credit is 15+ years.  In regard to learning about FICO and scoring systems, I do have my degree in Finance, which brought about a basic understanding.  In 2011 I worked with a credit counselor to clean up my score, this is where I was introduced to the "games" of improving your score and understanding what gets reported and how my score could improve over time.  In 2014, I revisited the same credit counselor to walk through my report and see if there were any other areas opportunity to improve my score as I was in the process of buying a house.  Fast forward 4 years later, between occassionally lurking here and reading articles online about credit reporting and factors I have developed a higher noviceish level of the scoring system.  Ultimately, my credit utilization is pretty low (typically in the 10-15% range), my on time payments are excellent, my length of debt is rated as excellent as are my revolving lines of credit.  I believe the only dings on my credit now are 2 student loans that were reported as in default 5+ years ago, but are no longer in default as they have been consolidated and paid on time every month for over 5 years.  The other ding are my two credit inquries/loans for cars, purchased 2 and 3 years ago.  So based on my profile on MyFico I hit Excellent on 3 of 5 categories and great/good on the other 2.  This is where my frustration lies in seeing my score having flatlined over the past two years.  In all honesty, I am glad that I checked and found this out as using Credit Karma and Cap One my Vantage score is 760+, this score also has consistently gone up over time.  Just boggles my mind that my score can be so drastically different, talking 50-60+ points depending on the score.

[Anonymous]

Be careful when referencing "ratings" that you're given by CMS sources.  All of that excellent, good, etc. stuff is basically just fluff and moving from one "rating" to another isn't always going to result in a score change. 

You stated above that your "on time payments are excellent" but I believe you also stated that you defaulted on multiple loans.  That being said, can I assume that you have late payments present on your credit report?  If so and they're of the 30/60 variety and 2+ years old I would say your payment history is average.  If you have even a single 90+ day late present, even if it's 6-7 years old, your payment history is going to be scored as poor; you'd be leaving 60-100 points on the table depending on the severity/number/age of major delinquencies.  Fluff monitoring software at times can excluded older late payments from their charts and graphs, painting a picture that you're "excellent" in a certain area like payment history when in fact FICO scoring views major negatives as terrible for your score.  

You also stated that your utilization is typically in the 10%-15% range.  Keep in mind getting that below 8.9% is probably good for another 15-25 points on your FICO scores, so you aren't far off from being able to bump them up a bit. 

[Anonymous]

"Brutal" is absolutely correct in thier post. March 5, 2018 I paid down a 4 + year old USAA secured card to $55/down from 1175/1200, and my FICO 8 scores across the board increased by more than 120 points, showing by March 11/12, when I pulled them on this site. EX 637/756, EQ 643/781, TU 651/775. All of my FICO 9's were 760+. The highest being EQ @689. I had only the one USAA (secured) card for nearly 5 years. Needless to say I was invited by a Rep at USAA to app for one of their cards, I app'd for a USAA Preferred Siggy; instant approval 20k, and 2 hour later I called NFCU (what the heck), app'd for their Flagship siggy, instand approval 25k. US Bank appoved me the next for their Cash + with SL 5k. So, seems there's a method to the credit score madness. I get in when I can get in, and do what I need to do, to keep my credit in line.

[Anonymous]

***Correction*** EQ 789, not 689.

[NRB525]

Marine, did you also have baddies fully removed / aged off from your reports, so that no baddies remain?
Those score improvements are not just from a utilization reduction, though that does provide some score boost.

[NRB525]

OP your basic issue is you still have baddies, and those put a ceiling on your score. Regardless that you have a recent string of on time payments, with any baddies at all, that gives you the ceiling.

It is critical to your score that payments be on time, every month. You say FICO does not measure good behavior and yet you miss the basic tracking FICO uses, documenting each month of on time payments.

It is true FICO reports baddies, if a 30-day late appears, but that is because the baseline expectation is, you will pay your agreed debt on time. As I said earlier, credit is all about trust. When you break that trust by not paying on time, banks want to know that. As long as a record exists on your file of broken trust, you have a ceiling. Seven years.

Since you have a finance degree, put yourself in the bankers chair. You have thousands of applicants asking you for loans. How do you quickly sort through all those applications? The answer can be to purchase a FICO score model and put those applications on the bell curve of risk measurement. Do you want to use multiple, slightly different models to measure that bell curve, or standadardize your review to one model?

And FICO is only one method. For many major banks like Chase, AMEX and CapOne, their internal records of your account activity are used for their internal scoring decisions. So people with aged lates but no bankruptcy may be able to get decent limits with AMEX by building up that good recent history. Still not likely to get the highest limits, but improving over time.

[Thomas_Thumb]

Well, I enjoy a good royal scam now and then.