Random Unthreadworthy Questions
Pretty standard to run a credit report. Should be a soft pull unless it’s getting tied to something credity, like courtesy pay or OD Lines of Credit. They have a permissible purpose, in either event. Credit pulls cost them money, so they don’t do it just for kicks. Saves money in the long run to weed out the fraud risks and also provides another means of authentication.
Random Unthreadworthy Questions
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Ted Striker
Pulls cost money that they pass along to their pool of customers. And I have no problem with their intended use. My gripe is Fair Isaac et al marketing credit scores as a predictive tool for all behavior, and businesses requiring them for cash transactions where no loan or credit is involved. It's just expanding their book.
The idea that high FICO = responsible person is dubious at best, and frankly discriminatory. Ask any recent immigrant.
It’s a fairly good prediction of whether or not you’ll pay an obligation, and that’s mostly all your bank is after. That and to confirm your name, address, etc. against the database. If it wasn’t effective they wouldn’t pay for it, and while the cost is passed on in some form or other, products are more typically priced against the market and saving $2/account is all profit, baby, until somebody passes a fraudulent $500 check and disappears.
The discriminatory argument has been had here, but the synopsis is that credit scoring is fairly objective even if the inputs and the uses are not. Any idiot can get a 700+ credit score quickly if they just pay the bills they agree to pay. Inequities in score distributions are reflections of broken systems, not the broken systems themselves.