39 ms·

I had a recent 30 day delinquent payment reduce my credit score by 80 points. And this was because the letter in the mail was mid-delivered. Not that the credit

I had a recent 30 day delinquent payment reduce my credit score by 80 points. And this was because the letter in the mail was mid-delivered. Not that the credit card issuer, nor the credit agencies give two shits. This was after about 5 hours of calls ping-ponging between the two.

harryh 7y ago
Your anecdote is interesting but does not constitute data on the overall predictive powers of credit scores.
- zonidjan 7y ago
  It does when millions of people have similar anecdotes, and when the system is literally set up for it. Places can report whatever they want to. And you can dispute it, but the person who report it will just say "no, we're right" and it'll stay up.
  - nudiustertian 7y ago
    This I've been fighting with Equifax and TransUnion for 5 years to remove 30 year old reports on my credit history (which are clearly not me because im less than 25 years old)
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      This is amazing. How are you running into trouble with this for 5 years? What is their counterargument?
  - adrr 7y ago
    If you could build a better algorithm to do underwriting, you could make billions. Companies try all the time like zest finance.
    - munk-a 7y ago
      Not being the worst is not the same as succeeding. Following that logic the Burj Khalifa is a space elevator because no one has been able to build a better space elevator than that. I have general objections to this sort of underwriting assessment being an ethical business for a private organization to begin with due to the immense amount of possibility for discrimination it opens up.
      - harryh 7y ago
        On the contrary, the modern credit scoring system has been a huge success when it comes to fighting discrimination. Previously banks left underwriting decisions to the whims of individual bankers. Unsurprisingly, many of these whims were based on things like the color of an applicants skin. While there are certainly some arguments to be made about disparate impact under our current system basically everyone agrees that access to credit for minorities is much much better than it used to be.
    - mikeash 7y ago
      Better for whom? I’m sure the existing credit bureaus are great for the people who give them money. They sure suck for the rest of us, though. Fortunately for them, we get zero say.
      - adrr 7y ago
        Market is efficient. If underwriting wasn’t efficient, a company could utilize better algorithms and offer better rates and better determine risk to minimize default. This a multi billion dollar opportunity. People don’t care about who is underwriting their car or home loan, they care about rates.
        mikeash 7y ago
        Equifax and their brother businesses give us low rates in exchange for exposing us to fraud risks whose monetary value is probably literally incalculable. The thing is, we don’t get to choose whether we’re exposed to those risks. It happens whether we like it or not. So let’s say I start a company that offers better TCO: my rates are a bit higher but this is more than made up for by a much lower fraud risk. Do I win the market? No, because Equifax’s fraud risk hits my customers just as much, so I’m not competitive. Credit bureaus give us low rates because they externalize the costs. Since the costs are externalities, competition can’t beat them. It’s the financial equivalent of making cheap electricity by poisoning the community with emissions.
billh 7y ago
I've had credit card companies call me and straight up say "If you pay this right now over the phone with me and pay the $15 telephone transaction fee, this won't hit your credit report" Between the "Pay for Delete" scams and the gamifying of your credit score through services like CreditKarma I really questions how close these scores are hitting anymore in relation to relative credit risk.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  > I've had credit card companies call me and straight up say "If you pay this right now over the phone with me and pay the $15 telephone transaction fee, this won't hit your credit report" Does that not qualify as extortion?
  - throwawaycert 7y ago
    The contract you agree to for credit cards or other forms of debt you choose to take on will specify things like late fees and that it's up to the company's discretion whether they report you a late payment to the agencies. If they didn't have this clause, you'd just be complaining that they report everyone indiscriminately rather than giving people a break when it seems appropriate.
    - mehrdadn 7y ago
      > The contract you agree to for credit cards or other forms of debt you choose to take on will specify things like late fees and that it's up to the company's discretion whether they report you a late payment to the agencies. If they didn't have this clause, you'd just be complaining that they report everyone indiscriminately rather than giving people a break when it seems appropriate. Thanks for making ridiculous assumptions and putting nonsense in my mouth. Nobody opined on anything in the first place. I was merely asking a legal question, because calling someone to demand an immediate payment to avoid direct harm to them sounds an awful lot like extortion, whether I like the approach or not. If you want to know whether I'm impossible to satisfy or whether I think the company could in fact cut people slack while getting their $15 and avoiding potential extortion, you could just ask me. Yes, I think that's perfectly possible. Call the person up, tell them you'll waive the credit report if they make a payment by the end of the day, and optionally remind them that according to their contract, there is a $15 fee if they pay by phone. There. Now the person gets to spend more than 5 seconds thinking about it to make an informed decision. No need to put nonsense in my mouth.
throwawaycert 7y ago
Credit scores change constantly. What your 80 point drop told creditors is "This person might not have enough money to pay their bills, or is careless or forgetful.". You are perceived as higher risk because, statistically, you are a higher risk. Those of us who maintain excellent credit do it in part by making sure our money gets where it's supposed to. I check online to make sure payments post, or hand in payments in person, or call in the rare case these days when there's no other way to check. Fortunately, credit scores usually recover rather quickly from one-off delinquencies if you stay current afterward. And I bet you'll be paying more attention to your bills now, won't you? The credit score is doing exactly what it's supposed to.
- kome 7y ago
  > The credit score is doing exactly what it's supposed to. policing people and make the poor to pay more.
  - throwawaycert 7y ago
    If you don't pay your bills, I think it's entirely reasonable for businesses to tell each other about that so you don't defraud them out of a lot of money.
    - XaoDaoCaoCao 7y ago
      >the entire banking system promotes systematic moral hazards and has lowered the purchasing power of stagnating wages for most people "Why are people defaulting on their bills!?" The whole notion of transfer of majority responsibility to an individual is one of the slimiest things in this society. We get monitored by an array of hidden surveillance measures and algorithimic judgement we have no way to properly counter or defend ourselves against. Meanwhile central credit gets to borrow money and get bailed out. Give me a fudging break.
      - throwawaycert 7y ago
        This isn't complicated. You incur a debt, you pay it. If you can't, people aren't going to want to do business with you, and will quite reasonably refuse. You are trying to make everyone else responsible for my finances and I'd damn well thank you to stop, since they're mine.
mehrdadn 7y ago
This doesn't solve the problem that already happened, but I would take this as a sign that it might not be a bad idea to just opt into e-statements and avoid snail mail. The world is electronic now. If nothing else, you'll at least save some carbon, paper, etc. from being consumed along the way.
ryanmercer 7y ago
I have autopay set up on my Google store Synchrony account, this last bill, for whatever reason, it did not attempt to withdrawal the money then sent me an email saying I was overdue and I now had to pay DOUBLE so I did manually, two days later I get an email saying my adjusted auto-pay had applied. Guess what popped up on my report this week? A late payment. It does not let you pick the autopay date, and instead puts it on the date the bill is due, otherwise I'd have it auto pay at the first of the month weeks before it was due. However, it is not worth my time to call and probably have to deal with a call center for an hour before I get someone that will promise to remove it and then have to write three letters to send off to the CRBs to dispute it and wait another couple of months for it to possibly get removed.

harryh 7y ago

Your anecdote is interesting but does not constitute data on the overall predictive powers of credit scores.

zonidjan 7y ago
It does when millions of people have similar anecdotes, and when the system is literally set up for it. Places can report whatever they want to. And you can dispute it, but the person who report it will just say "no, we're right" and it'll stay up.
- nudiustertian 7y ago
  This I've been fighting with Equifax and TransUnion for 5 years to remove 30 year old reports on my credit history (which are clearly not me because im less than 25 years old)
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    This is amazing. How are you running into trouble with this for 5 years? What is their counterargument?
- adrr 7y ago
  If you could build a better algorithm to do underwriting, you could make billions. Companies try all the time like zest finance.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    Not being the worst is not the same as succeeding. Following that logic the Burj Khalifa is a space elevator because no one has been able to build a better space elevator than that. I have general objections to this sort of underwriting assessment being an ethical business for a private organization to begin with due to the immense amount of possibility for discrimination it opens up.
    - harryh 7y ago
      On the contrary, the modern credit scoring system has been a huge success when it comes to fighting discrimination. Previously banks left underwriting decisions to the whims of individual bankers. Unsurprisingly, many of these whims were based on things like the color of an applicants skin. While there are certainly some arguments to be made about disparate impact under our current system basically everyone agrees that access to credit for minorities is much much better than it used to be.
  - mikeash 7y ago
    Better for whom? I’m sure the existing credit bureaus are great for the people who give them money. They sure suck for the rest of us, though. Fortunately for them, we get zero say.
    - adrr 7y ago
      Market is efficient. If underwriting wasn’t efficient, a company could utilize better algorithms and offer better rates and better determine risk to minimize default. This a multi billion dollar opportunity. People don’t care about who is underwriting their car or home loan, they care about rates.
      - mikeash 7y ago
        Equifax and their brother businesses give us low rates in exchange for exposing us to fraud risks whose monetary value is probably literally incalculable. The thing is, we don’t get to choose whether we’re exposed to those risks. It happens whether we like it or not. So let’s say I start a company that offers better TCO: my rates are a bit higher but this is more than made up for by a much lower fraud risk. Do I win the market? No, because Equifax’s fraud risk hits my customers just as much, so I’m not competitive. Credit bureaus give us low rates because they externalize the costs. Since the costs are externalities, competition can’t beat them. It’s the financial equivalent of making cheap electricity by poisoning the community with emissions.

billh 7y ago

I've had credit card companies call me and straight up say "If you pay this right now over the phone with me and pay the $15 telephone transaction fee, this won't hit your credit report" Between the "Pay for Delete" scams and the gamifying of your credit score through services like CreditKarma I really questions how close these scores are hitting anymore in relation to relative credit risk.

mehrdadn 7y ago
> I've had credit card companies call me and straight up say "If you pay this right now over the phone with me and pay the $15 telephone transaction fee, this won't hit your credit report" Does that not qualify as extortion?
- throwawaycert 7y ago
  The contract you agree to for credit cards or other forms of debt you choose to take on will specify things like late fees and that it's up to the company's discretion whether they report you a late payment to the agencies. If they didn't have this clause, you'd just be complaining that they report everyone indiscriminately rather than giving people a break when it seems appropriate.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    > The contract you agree to for credit cards or other forms of debt you choose to take on will specify things like late fees and that it's up to the company's discretion whether they report you a late payment to the agencies. If they didn't have this clause, you'd just be complaining that they report everyone indiscriminately rather than giving people a break when it seems appropriate. Thanks for making ridiculous assumptions and putting nonsense in my mouth. Nobody opined on anything in the first place. I was merely asking a legal question, because calling someone to demand an immediate payment to avoid direct harm to them sounds an awful lot like extortion, whether I like the approach or not. If you want to know whether I'm impossible to satisfy or whether I think the company could in fact cut people slack while getting their $15 and avoiding potential extortion, you could just ask me. Yes, I think that's perfectly possible. Call the person up, tell them you'll waive the credit report if they make a payment by the end of the day, and optionally remind them that according to their contract, there is a $15 fee if they pay by phone. There. Now the person gets to spend more than 5 seconds thinking about it to make an informed decision. No need to put nonsense in my mouth.

throwawaycert 7y ago

Credit scores change constantly. What your 80 point drop told creditors is "This person might not have enough money to pay their bills, or is careless or forgetful.". You are perceived as higher risk because, statistically, you are a higher risk. Those of us who maintain excellent credit do it in part by making sure our money gets where it's supposed to. I check online to make sure payments post, or hand in payments in person, or call in the rare case these days when there's no other way to check. Fortunately, credit scores usually recover rather quickly from one-off delinquencies if you stay current afterward. And I bet you'll be paying more attention to your bills now, won't you? The credit score is doing exactly what it's supposed to.

kome 7y ago
> The credit score is doing exactly what it's supposed to. policing people and make the poor to pay more.
- throwawaycert 7y ago
  If you don't pay your bills, I think it's entirely reasonable for businesses to tell each other about that so you don't defraud them out of a lot of money.
  - XaoDaoCaoCao 7y ago
    >the entire banking system promotes systematic moral hazards and has lowered the purchasing power of stagnating wages for most people "Why are people defaulting on their bills!?" The whole notion of transfer of majority responsibility to an individual is one of the slimiest things in this society. We get monitored by an array of hidden surveillance measures and algorithimic judgement we have no way to properly counter or defend ourselves against. Meanwhile central credit gets to borrow money and get bailed out. Give me a fudging break.
    - throwawaycert 7y ago
      This isn't complicated. You incur a debt, you pay it. If you can't, people aren't going to want to do business with you, and will quite reasonably refuse. You are trying to make everyone else responsible for my finances and I'd damn well thank you to stop, since they're mine.

mehrdadn 7y ago

This doesn't solve the problem that already happened, but I would take this as a sign that it might not be a bad idea to just opt into e-statements and avoid snail mail. The world is electronic now. If nothing else, you'll at least save some carbon, paper, etc. from being consumed along the way.

ryanmercer 7y ago

I have autopay set up on my Google store Synchrony account, this last bill, for whatever reason, it did not attempt to withdrawal the money then sent me an email saying I was overdue and I now had to pay DOUBLE so I did manually, two days later I get an email saying my adjusted auto-pay had applied. Guess what popped up on my report this week? A late payment. It does not let you pick the autopay date, and instead puts it on the date the bill is due, otherwise I'd have it auto pay at the first of the month weeks before it was due. However, it is not worth my time to call and probably have to deal with a call center for an hour before I get someone that will promise to remove it and then have to write three letters to send off to the CRBs to dispute it and wait another couple of months for it to possibly get removed.