This: "When a utility to which she owed $300 offered to settle for less, Ms. King says, she declined, because she was told an overdue bill takes longer to come

This: "When a utility to which she owed $300 offered to settle for less, Ms. King says, she declined, because she was told an overdue bill takes longer to come off a person's credit report when it is settled for a partial payment." Probably has something to do with this: "she lost the shoe-store job in January, and then learned that a prospective new employer had rejected her after running a credit check. Fearing that her credit record would trip her up again and again, she resolved to fix her financial mess." and other bits and pieces like it. I wonder if this kind of heightened awareness of credit scores, service to help people repair them, using them as a proxy for other things and such invalidates credit scores as a measure of creditworthiness. What happens if the "market" suddenly loses faith in the idea of credit scores as a measure of default risk?