How fair is Fair Isaac?

[Anonymous]

My Washington Mutual CC posts Fair Isaac scores. It shows that I have 2 delinquencies. There is only one. Washington Mutual told me I could send them a copy of my report to change this. Takes time I don't have. They came up with the score; they should have to correct their research without costing me. I never asked for their score, but since they've done this, correct it! I'm tired of chasing incorrect information that affects my percentage rates, etc. As a middle school special ed. teacher I have enough flack to deal with. Fair Isaac, are you listening?

[haulingthescoreup]

Hi, welcome to the forums. Sorry to hear you have errors on your report. It's very common, unfortunately.

This info is supplied by your lenders, past and present, to the credit bureaus, and the credit bureaus then supply it for scoring. Fair Isaac crunches the numbers that are supplied to them --they don't do "research", per se.

Either a lender is reporting incorrectly, or the credit bureau or bureaus are recording and reporting incorrectly. That's where the error probably arises, and so they are the ones who are responsible for fixing it.

It's annoying to have to fix other people's mistakes, but this is your credit, and eventually your money. If you want it off, there's lots of info here on how to do this. You might start with Credit Scoring 101 and then look around in Frequently Requested Threads. These are both posted at the top of the General Credit Issues board. Here's the URL for Credit Scoring 101:

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/fico/board/message?board.id=ficoscoring&thread.id=2654

By the way, I work 60 to 70 hours a week at two jobs, and as best as I can tell, pretty much everyone else here works full-time in paying jobs and/or in running households and raising children. I guess like anything else, if something is important or rewarding enough, you find the time for it. Good luck

[Anonymous]

Hauling has a third full time job (unpaid) as a myFICO mod ... don't know how she does it!

[haulingthescoreup]

Because hauling completely ignores her fourth job as housekeeper!

[RobertEG]

Amen, Hauling.  It is NOT the responsibility of the CRA to correct credit scores if the data they received was incorrectly reported by a creditor, but was correctly entered by them based on what was reported.  If they are receiviing reports of delinquencies that are not correct, the remedy is to have the credit reporter correct their data sent to the CRA.  The CRA has NO part in this data, other than to enter it correctly.  To go to the last person in the FICO food chain because one does not have time to address the source of the data, and say that have responsibility to research the data they receive, is simply just not the way the system works. Following and correcting credit reports is something that admittedly takes time, and is often frustrating.  But the procedures are clear, and sensible.

Message Edited by RobertEG on 01-23-2008 07:56 PM

[GregB]

AND, you only need to correct the errors that HURT your score. I have found three errors total between the three CRAs that probably HELP my score.

[haulingthescoreup]

Every now and again, you get luckY

[marty56]

... Takes time I don't have.

Improving on your FICO score is all about time and effort.  It is down to you to take care of your FICO score.  In the time it took for you to post and read responses in this forum, you could have probably cut and pasted a GW letter to the credit card company.

As far as how fair is Fair Isaac is, I think the answer depends on what you do to take care of your own FICO scores and make it fair.

[Anonymous]

My biggest complaint is that the CRA's are not required to hold positive history, i.e. the oldest tradeline.

My file says I have been on record with the CRA's since 1985, yet since I have closed a few accounts I opened in those early years, the history is gone by now, 23 years later.    This does not seem fair.  

I know, I know, life is not either.  But this is a flaw that the CRA's should correct, or make Congress mandate it for them, maybe in the next update of the FCRA.

[haulingthescoreup]

The latest twist on this is that many members are reporting that closed accounts are falling off their EQ reports. These are accounts that were scheduled to report for many more years.

I wish the CRA's would design their software so that things stay put (and report correctly!) This sort of thing is just ridiculous.