Our credit and credit scores are important, right? But unfortunately....

[Zenlitened]

... our lives are in the hands of complete and utter fools.

I'm on the phone with my bank's loan office, trying to complete a home equity loan so I can get a better rate on what's left of my mortgage... and find myself explaining TO THE BANK how loans work.

No, the "current balance" figure on my existing mortgage statement is NOT the same as the loan payoff amount! If I give you that figure and you write a check in that amount, my mortgage company is going to reject it. It's the WRONG amount, because we haven't figured in escrow balances, per diem fees, and other factors.

So here's the thing. I'm sorely tempted to say fuck-it-then and go find a bank that knows its own business. But if I do that, if I walk away from this loan process now, I will have HURT MY OWN CREDIT SCORE. Ya see, applying for credit and not getting it -- for whatever reason -- is held against you for years and years to come.

Even if you yourself say "I don't want your damned loan anymore," the industry will find a way to use it as an excuse to wring a higher rate out of you somewhere down the line. And, worse yet, they'll use it to label you as a "bad person" to whomever else looks at your credit score -- potential employers, business partners, local Morality Police, the neighbor's kid down the street, who's snooping around the bank's incredibly non-secure database. Anybody.

I swear, I have this last little bit of my home mortgage to pay off, in about 7 to 10 years, and then I'm getting OFF THE GRID. Don't wanna play no more. I'll own what I own, I'll pay for what I buy when I buy it. And I'll quit being jerked around by an industry that has the arrogance to set the rules for everyone on the planet, yet lacks the competence to run its own business.

:grr:

</rant>

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

1. I hear ya...

that's not even half as bad as trying to fix completely wrong and inaccurate information from your credit reports. The process is so biased against the consumer it's not even funny. The credit bureaus make it so damn hard to get wrong information taken out.

[leftofthedial]

2. I'm committed to removing myself from the financial

industry's clutches too. No more credit cards or loans of any kind.

I'm in the process of losing almost everything and cashing out the rest. It's pretty damned scary at my age, but I think I'll be able to buy basic shelter outright.

[lenidog]

3. Then add into the mix the wonderful credit reporting companies

I found out several months ago that I was retired. Damn!! I wish someone had told me that and where is my retirement money. I love how all of the companies out there accept the info from places like Equifax like its the gospel and so many times its screwed up. Me I have gotten rid of all of them save one. I have one Visa card which I almost never use and I only keep that around for things like renting cars.

[Occulus]

4. Credit scores have become so misused I'm starting to think

they're just a bad thing, in general. Better to never borrow anything than get involved with that system.

For example:

I was recently told by my bank's loan officer that applying for a credit report- even for a legit purpose, even if you do it yourself- costs a few points. Not many, mind you, but they do add up, especially if someone is looking for an apartment or job, many of which now take a look at credit reports.

There's nothing you can do about it: as you remain homeless and jobless, as you apply for homes and jobs, your score gradually drops. :wtf:? Why? Is there some reason simply asking for your credit report should come at a cost to that same report, plus any fees you may incur as a result of getting the report?

And then, there's the job/apartment situation: if your credit is bad enough, you may not be employed or housed. That's misuse.

[Kingshakabobo]

15. That loan officer is wrong.

A personal report is SUPPOSED to show as an inquiry.

[Occulus]

25. I asked her if she was certain

She said it's something most people don't understand; any report that is run costs a point or two. And, to be honest, that is exactly what happened when she ran my report to get my credit information for the loan.

[MindPilot]

5. My bizarre banking story

After First Interstate Bank took over San Diego Trust and Savings, I never was able to reconcile my checkbook. So I waited for all my outstanding checks to come in and went into the bank to close all my accounts. As it turned out, the bank's definition of "all" was slightly different than mine. I was unaware they had failed to close the overdraft protection account, a five hundred dollar credit line to guard against bounced checks.

About eighteen months later, I begin receiving dunning letters and phone messages from First Interstate. When I finally got to talk to a real person, I became involved in the most bizarre conversation I've ever had that didn't involve intoxicants. (I'm not making this up!)

FI: "You need to make a payment right away to avoid collection proceedings."

Me: "I'm just curious here. Does it always take you a year and a half to decide some one is late with a payment?"

FI: "What do you mean?"

Me: "I mean I haven't been anywhere near your bank for 18 months. If I failed to make a payment, wouldn't you have notified me oh, say, 17 months ago?"

FI: "But you're only late this month."

Me: "I want to be very clear on this: I have made no deposits, payments, withdrawals or any other transactions with First Interstate since I closed my accounts 18 months ago."

FI: "Well, obviously somebody has been making the payments for you."

Me "Who?"

FI: "I don't know, a family member, or maybe your wife?"

Me: "I'm not married, I live alone, and have no family within a couple of thousand miles of here."

FI: "Well, sir, SOMEBODY is making those payments!"

Me:" So, you're telling me that somebody I don't know is going to a bank I don't do business with, making payments on an account I don't have, and not telling me about it?"

FI: "Yes!"

Turns out the bank's system automatically debited the checking account to pay the overdraft account. If there was no money in the checking account, the system transferred $25 from the overdraft account to the checking account, then made a payment essentially paying itself. What the system DIDN'T do was verify if the checking account it debited actually existed! Finally the overdraft account hit its limit and when it could no longer pay itself, the dunning began.

[Ysolde]

6. OMG!

What kind of idiot programmer wrote that POS logic? I swear! My husband is sooo right! We are losing whatever logic and reasoning abilites we ever had! I really, truly see another Dark Ages coming on. Unfortunately, there won't be an enlightened Arabic world to cache our current knowledge. Truly scary.

[high density]

9. I work for a bank and you should see some of the crap software we use

The mainframe seems solid and generally decent (jeeze, I hope it's a different platform than that of First Interstate Bank!) but some of our other software is quite scary given how fragile it is. The problem is that banks are so cheap. They probably have knowledgeable people who tell them what software or machines they should buy, and then the people making the purchasing decisions just go out and get the cheapest thing they can that will barely fulfill the minimum requirements. In the short run it saves money but ends up costing more in the long run in lost productivity. I can't believe how shortsighted they all are.

[Ysolde]

10. You know...

it's not just banks that are like that! Perfectly describes my large IT company, too! IT management are lemmings.

[MindPilot]

17. Agreed 110%!! I'm in the IT department of one of the biggest

electronics manufacturing companies in the world, and our system is pathetic. They shortcut everything including people. The people who have survived the cuts are treated decently and paid very well, but our work backlogs are into months. Somewhere along the line upper management has decided it's more profitable to have a six-figure engineer staring at a blank screen for three weeks than hire me some help.

[donco6]

14. Wow.

That's pretty amazing. I'd have to wonder how many times that's happening in that bank. It basically winds up showing everyone's overdraft loan as a receivable, even if they don't happen to have dipped into it. Scary.

[high density]

7. Sounds like you maybe just had bad luck on the phone

Most bank employees are rather poorly paid (unless they're VPs or higher) so don't be surprised that some of them don't know what they're talking about.

[Zenlitened]

8. Well, the folks in their letter-writing department aren't much better.

They sent me a letter with the wrong interest rate quoted. Only took a week to straighten that part out. :crazy:

Bank employees are indeed poorly paid. They are also poorly trained -- if trained at all. They have been left ignorant of the requirements of their own jobs. The industry has decided it's not worth training them because employee turnover rate is high.

And why is employee turnover rate high? Because employees are poorly paid. But hey, as long as they execs are gettting their big fat bonuses, to hell with the customer experience. The customers' feelings don't mean squat, because most of them can't escape the grip of the finance industry no matter what they think about it.

So it's not just a matter of "bad luck" on the phone. The entire industry is fatally flawed, in control of vital information yet unwilling to commit the resources to do its work properly.

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

11. The worst part is

that, whenever a mistake has been made (and it's almost always due to the financial institution's fault), the service reps make it like it's your fault. Whatever happened to the customer is always right idea?

[MindPilot]

12. Wells Fargo has managed to cross my ex's ssn with my name & visa versa

so my stuff is on her credit report and her stuff is on mine which of course screws us both. I've been working for a couple years to get that cleared up.

[progressivebydesign]

28. My stepdaughter and I have nearly the same name...

and we have to order credit reports yearly to remove each other's info. You'd THINK that different spelling of a first name, different middle names, different social security numbers, and birthdates, would kinda keep the two separate!!! But no.. we've morphed into one person in they eyes of the credit world. For her, it's great, it looks like she has this killer credit score.. for me, it sux. Makes me look like a thief with two soc. sect. numbers and too many accounts open. She's a part time barista with marginal credit on her own who is know getting solicitations to pay off MY home loan!

[Zenlitened]

29. Incredible. And yet if YOU stumble once in your finances, YOU are...

... a bad bad terrible horrible person in the eyes of the financial industry -- and everyone they're sharing info with. Argh.

Good for you, for keeping on top of them! :thumbsup:

[Mandate My Ass]

13. Here's what my non-secure bank did to me - unbelievable

I lost my MasterCard ATM card one night about a month and a half ago. Luckily, I noticed this less than half an hour later.

I called the bank and reported the card lost/stolen and asked them to deactivate it and send me a new one. The girl sounded very unsure of herself and kept putting me on hold and asking me the same questions over and over again and I got a bad feeling that she was new and didn't know the proper procedures, so I asked for a supervisor and she said because it was Sunday night, the supervisor wouldn't be there until the end of the shift.

So, the next morning I called back and re-reported the card and asked if there had been any activity on it and they said "no." They also said the rep I spoke to the night before did everything correctly. I could expect my card in a week.

After a week, no new card. I called a third time. Got all kinds of reassurances that everything was being done but it takes ten business days to get a new card.

After ten business days I called back a fourth time. My card had never been cancelled and there were new charges on it!!

I called corporate headquarters and asked them how in the HELL this could have happened. THey apologized. I asked if reps had to log what they did on a phone call into a computer and he said "no."

OK, I said, then how in the hell do you know they're doing their jobs? He said, "We randomly listen in."

These women are probably all getting raises for being friendly and efficient because if all they do to determine that is monitor their calls, they were great!

[Liberal In Texas]

26. Boy, is that scary!

I must say, that American Express is very good about dealing with a lost or stolen card. They will IMMEDIATELY cancel the old number and FedEx you a new one, no matter where in the world you are.

Sorry to hear about your "problem" and another "horror story" about our "freindly" bankers.

[Cleita]

16. You might just be doing business with the wrong bank.

I had to switch three times until I found a smaller bank that still believes in customer service. I still get the same rates the bigger banks offer. They also handle my retirement funds and car loan (no mortgage) and there are no problems.

[napi21]

21. I agree with you! I've dealt with smaller loal banks for 9 years.

It used to be that all banks were very customer friendly, but about 10-12 years ago, they started to merge, and some just got bigger and bigger. The bigger they got, the less they wanted to bother with the small customer! If you are a big company with lots of transactions, big deposits and big loans, they treat you like a king, if you're a private individual that's not going to make them big $$, they'd rather see you just go away!

The smaller local banks have the same FDIC insurance, same competative rates, and all the services an individual needs, but they treat you like a valued customer! I'll NEVER go back to a National Bank again!

[Zenlitened]

23. Sadly, this IS the local, "community-oriented" bank.

:eyes:

[Kingshakabobo]

18. A few inquiries her and there shouldn't affect your score.

You should be able to walk away without hurting your situation as the scoring models don't know if you have been turned down or walked away.

i think people get a little too caught up in worrying about the number of inquiries. The only time I have seen any significant move in a score is from some kid applying for 10 credit cards in the period of 30 days. Scores DO fluctuate on a daily basis but it is due mostly to credit card balances.

That reminds me, I have to pull my OWN report to see if MY BANK fixed THEIR mistake on MY OWN PERSONAL LOAN.

I'm a loan officer for a bank and they are reporting me late for my mortgage that was already sold. It seems as though there was a glitch when they sold the mortgage and I owed them about $100 bucks for interest. Fair enough so I paid it. They kept sending me bills and FORECLOSURE notices on a loan they no longer held. It was almost amusing. I got to see how people have to deal with mortgage companies and the complete lack of common sense and logic. I was able to point out to our upper management how f--ked up our collections department is.

[AndyTiedye]

19. I Paid Mine Off - I don't Owe Nobody Nothin'

and I pay my credit cards in full each month.

Getting off the (electrical) grid here would be difficult,
we're too heavily forested for solar,
but a windmill might do some good here.

[Ysolde]

20. As Cleita posted earlier...

a small bank might help, but I'd recommend a credit union. They are non-profit and really do work for their members. I don't do business with banks if I can help it! CUs still believe the customer is right and they try to educate their members about financial matters. I've been hearing rumblings that the banks are getting worried so they keep lobbying to try to do away with credit unions. Makes my choices to bank there even easier!

[Liberal In Texas]

24. Yes! Credit Unions are so much better than you're "friendly" bank.

I will never go back.

[Zenlitened]

22. And speaking of our fates being in the hands of fools...

Firm says up to 40m credit card files stolen

MasterCard points to computer virus

By Hiawatha Bray and Sasha Talcott, Boston Globe Staff | June 18, 2005

In one of the biggest identity thefts ever, as many as 40 million credit card numbers have been stolen from an Atlanta credit card processing firm, according to MasterCard International, and some of the stolen numbers have already been used to make fraudulent purchases.

MasterCard said yesterday that criminals used a computer virus to collect vast amounts of financial data moving through the company's computer network and estimated that 13.9 million of its accounts may have been stolen. Thieves also had access to millions of cards issued by Visa and Discover, as well as some American Express cards. There have been dozens of major identity theft cases this year, affecting nearly 10 million Americans. But the breach revealed by MasterCard is by far the biggest -- four times larger than all the others put together.

''This illustrates that consumers don't have control over their personal sensitive information, and that has to change," said Susanna Montezemolo, policy analyst for Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports magazine. Consumers Union is calling for states and the federal government to require companies to notify customers if their personal data have been breached...

(snip)

Such notification would publicly embarrass the companies and force them to be more careful, said Frank (US Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Newton), the ranking member of the House Committee on Financial Services. ''Their argument is, 'we don't want to clog people's mailboxes.' Coming from the financial services industry, that is the silliest thing you ever heard."

Source:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/06/18/firm_says_up_to_40m_credit_card_files_stolen/

[progressivebydesign]

27. Ditto. We're getting off the credit merrygoround this year.

We have decided to sell our home, which has appreciated nicely, pay off all our debts. Close some accounts, leave just enuff open to keep a decent credit profile, and find a smaller house. We are going credit free.. except for the smaller, less expensive house, and pay it off as soon as possible.

I'm tiring of enriching the fatass corporations who are abusing us with Bush & Company's help. I'm closing all the accounts immediately in which I call for assistance and get someone in India or the like.. I'm going to let them know why, that i"m not enabling the company to take away breadwinner jobs in America and destroy families.

Don't get me started on outsourcing... I"m still pissed a Bill Gates for using so much outsourcing all the while talking about how we have to improve education in America. For a rich man, he's rather dumb. You can't improve education if the jobs that support parents are disappearing... it's nearly impossible to get a good education if you're poor, it's nearly impossible to have a good school system if tax revenues are decreasing because of lost jobs, lost homes, lost companies. The credit industry is one of the worst abusers of outsourcing our jobs. I won't enrich those people any longer.