More about Bank of America’s inexplicable rate hikes against good customers who never pay late: the Charlotte Observer talks to some recent recipients of BoA’s infamous rate-increase letters from the past few weeks. The first person they talk to is a 60-year-old woman who “had never been late on a credit card payment, just refinanced her home at a lower interest rate, and just been rewarded by her credit union with a lower rate on her credit card there.” Bank of America just raised her card from 13% to 24.99%.
fico
Why Is Bank Of America Raising Interest Rates On Its Good Customers?
By 2.8.08
BusinessWeek has just published an article about Bank of America’s recent surprise mailings in January to some of its customers, announcing “that it would more than double their rates to as high as 28%, without giving an explanation for the increase.” These customers have good credit scores and hadn’t made any late payments, and those who called Bank of America to ask why this was happening weren’t given clear reasons. Industry experts say Bank of America has reached a “new level” of “lack of transparency in raising rates,” beyond anything Citigroup and JP Morgan Chase currently practice, because BoA is apparently using some undisclosed internal metric to determine who gets the rate hike.
It's Still Possible To Game Your FICO Score By 100 Points Or More
By 1.21.08
For about $1400, you can raise your FICO credit score by 35 to 40 points through companies like TradeLine Solutions, writes the New York Times. Lots of subprime mortgage holders are turning to these companies in a last ditch effort to game the FICO system, in order to avoid rate adjustments that might send them into foreclosure. Of course, knowingly misrepresenting your credit score might count as loan fraud, points out a FICO representative.
MedFICO In Development, It's FICO For Patients!
By 1.18.08
From the folks that brought you the credit score system in all it’s glory, here’s MedFICO! It’s a new business project underway with the goal of assessing patient’s ability to pay their medical bills. The system would gather patient’s bill payment history from hospitals around the country and then assign patients a score similar to a credit score. Critics are worried if the same problems with people getting erroneous information in their credit report and then having an insanely difficult time cleaning it up would also affect MedFICO. They also worry whether hospitals would use MedFICO to determine the level of care offered, like whether the person gets a hospital stay or not. FICO scores are now being used by some employers to screen out potential employees, would they use MedFICO to see who might take a bigger chunk out of the health benefits?
Ben Popken On Fox Business News Chatting About FICO '08
By 1.2.08
Here’s the clip of yours truly, Ben Popken, on Fox Business News discussing some of the changes in store for FICO ’08, the credit-scoring system lenders use to determine how punitive a rate they get to charge you. You may notice that I have a strange look on my face at the beginning.
By 12.31.07
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Consumerist Editor Ben Popken will be on Fox Business News Monday at 12 noon to discuss the changes in store for FICO 08. UPDATE: It looks like our video slave is home today, so if anyone wants to DVR Ben’s appearance and email the video file to tips@consumerist.com, we’ll like, make you a cake or something.
How FICO 08 Changes Your Credit Score
By 12.20.07
The FICO system, whose credit scores lenders use to determine whether you’re credit-worthy and how favorable to set the terms, is set for a makeover. An article in today’s WSJ reveals more of the changes in store than previously disclosed, here’s how they’ll affect your credit score:
By 12.6.07
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Did you know you can upgrade your credit card with the issuer without losing your credit history? [Bankrate]
Meet The Woman Who Devised The New FICO Scoring System
By 11.26.07
SmartMoney has a feature this week about Susan Blue Hitt, an Austin-based math nerd who loves football, flies planes, and is responsible for the revised FICO scoring model “that will change the way credit scores are calculated, affecting interest rates for 160 million Americans” sometime next year.
Where To Get Your Real Credit Score
By 11.14.07
Finding your credit score can be hard if you’ve never done it before. There’s scam sites, conflicting information, and the credit bureaus offering their own version of the credit score. But if you want your FICO, the real score looked at by lenders to determine your credit-worthiness and interest rates, here’s where you can go:
How To Freeze Your Credit Report
By 11.6.07
Red Tape Chronicles has a good guide for how to set up a credit report freeze at each of the three major credit bureaus.
Credit Card Piggybacking Still Raises FICO Scores
By 11.5.07
You can still raise your credit score by getting added as an “authorized user” on the credit card account of someone with better credit. Industry plans close the loophole starting this September are still yet to be implemented. The change was to be part of the update to “FICO ’08,” a revised version of the credit scoring system sold by the Fair Issac Corporation and in use at the three major credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. So-called credit piggybacking is used by parents to help their kids get on the fast-track to better credit ratings. It has also used by fraudsters to qualify for mortgages they wouldn’t otherwise get – a contributing factor to the delinquencies in the subprime meltdown.
One Unpaid Bill Is Not Going To Ruin Your Credit Score
By 9.18.07
We get many tales of consumer disputes and a common situation we hear of us is where customers are dissatisfied with a product or service, refuse to pay until its fixed, and the business, usually a small business, threatens to “ruin” the customer’s credit score over the item. (For some reason, the word “ruin” is always used).
The World's Worst Credit Card
By 9.6.07
Golb at Money, Matter, and More Musings has located the worst credit card in the world. It is designed to prey on subprime borrowers who, sadly, cannot get a better card…
Got An Inactive Macy's Store Account? Here's Your New Citibank Mastercard
By 8.20.07
Recently, a Consumerist tipster sent in an internal memo from Macy’s explaining that the store was “flipping” 3.5 million inactive store accounts into Citibank Mastercards. The memo reads:
“Approximately 3.5 million inactive (24-48 months) Macy’s accounts have been selected to “flip” to the Citibank Mastercard. That means the customer will be sent a Citibank Mastercard to replace their inactive Macy’s card. “
FICO Expanding Number Of Bad Credit Categories, Overall Score Fluctuations Expected
By 8.13.07
Besides closing the authorized user piggyback loophole, another change in the new FICO score system is that the number of categories for risky debtors will go from two to four, reports the News&Observer. There will remain 8 categories for good credit, brining the total number of rankings to 12.
