Tell Congress_ No More Secret Credit Scores

Liz Pulliam Weston is tired of it. She’s tired of the spat between Fair Isaac and Experian. She’s tired of seeing consumers behind the eight ball. She’s also tired of Experian acting as though it’s no big deal that consumers only have access to just two FICO scores. But she doesn’t end there. She argues that consumers should have a right to see any and all scores that are used by lenders to judge our creditworthiness. From her story:Clearly, federal law needs to catch up with lender practices.Federal law has long guaranteed your right to see your credit reports. Companies that use your reports against you — to deny your application for credit, insurance or employment, for example, or to take any other adverse action against you — are supposed to explicitly tell you that’s what has happened. They’re also supposed to tell you which bureaus provided the reports and give you contact information so you can review your files and dispute any errors.In 2003, you were also given the right to buy your credit scores from the bureaus. But the law doesn’t specify you have to be given the same scores lenders use.It’s time to fix that and extend consumer protections to the other scores that are being used to evaluate you.Simply put: If a score is used against you for any reason, you should have a right to see that score, know how it was calculated and protest any errors in the data used to calculate it.I’m with Liz on this one. We’re in the dark when it comes to credit scores. I’d love to know about my bankruptcy score (link here). Next month, many of us will no longer have access to our Bankcard Industry Option FICO score (link here). I’ll want to know what that score is. What about the application score? How about the usage score? And what about the acquisition score? These are scores that we don’t have access to. (See Bankrate.com’s great story on that here.)Weston says that it is time to get Congress involved. Read the rest of the story here (link).Related Article:It’s Time For Fair Isaac and TransUnion To Modernize The FICO Score They Sell To The Public