I have a grand total of ONE late payment on my credit history, because I moved three states away, and my last postman sucked and didnt' forward my bills (I'm still working on that one). I called Equifax, they said I had to deal with it with my bank, and the bank said I had to deal with it with equifax.
I found this out when I'd gone to go get a car loan for a new car. Two months before, when I'd been shopping for apartments, I'd had my credit history checked by all those apartment places while I was shopping for a place. And because the DC area has an extreme shortage of housing, at least fifteen places had to check my credit (including for new bank accounts and such when I moved). I'd had almost flawless credit two months before. And now I'm not anywhere near the top rating for car loans, because so many people checked my credit history for a damned apartment.
My car intrest rate is a full percentage point above what it should be, because of all of this.
I'm still fighting to get the late payment removed from my credit history, which I've been told should be able to be accomplished, because moving is a reasonable reason for a late payment. However who's removing it is another question, and nobody wants to take responsibility for it.
The fact that no place will give me a top rated low interest loan because fifteen people checked my credit history is absolutely ridiculous. Until this year I'd never once had a late payment, and that one was excusable.
My rating gets screwed by the fact that I needed to find myself housing? That's a bunch of bullhockey. But it's what they rate it on, and most places will not allow you to fight it. When I asked about it with my car loan, they were surprised to see my rating was that low, yet I had only the one late payment. Still didn't mean they'd give me a better interest rate, tho.
It's not a matter of "this is unfair" stance, really. In some of those cases, it's a matter of "is this legal?"
When a person turns 18, their criminal records from prior to that age are supposed to be sealed, unless extraordinary circumstances rate opening those files.
A bad credit history is only supposed to be able to follow you around for a grand total of seven years. A good credit history likewise is only supposed to be able to follow you around for ten years.
The reason criminal records are sealed upon the time you hit the age of majority is because it is presumed that whatever you did before then can be attributed to the stupidity of teenagers. Most teenagers pull crap when they're younger that even five years later they'd be horrified by.
Things that follow you around for more than ten years are at that point digging into a portion of your history that really shouldn't matter anymore. If the person has had a wonderful credit history for the last fifteen years, but committed a major credit blunder sixteen years prior to that, if that person is now earning gobs of money and hasn't had a credit slipup once in the last fifteen years, should the one blunder sixteen years ago still prevent him from getting credit now?
A friend of mine was an orphan as a child. Obviously had no parents, and had to earn every dime he got, no safety net beneath him. When he got to college age, he applied for schools, got a scholarship, and proceeded to start attending college. However, a quarter of the way through the semester, the college said his tuition scholarship was somehow messed up, and he was dropped from the rest of the semester, because he couldn't afford to pay for it on his own, and the tuition couldn't be paid until much later because of the scholarship fund's problems. Same thing happened to him the following semester.
Two big hits to his credit, due to no fault of his own. He had to drop out of school entirely after having had a free ride scheduled for him, and started working in a foundry doing manual labor because of it.
Eleven years later, it still seems to follow him. And this credit hit was due to no fault of his own. But he's still denied loans and such, even though he has a great job and a great salary and pays off most things immediately. Because they keep searching his past, and finding that SOME time in his life, he had credit issues in college. That's all they see.
Should something that wasn't his fault that happened more than ten years ago affect his credit now? Not according to the credit bureaus.
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I have a grand total of ONE late payment on my credit history, because I moved three states away, and my last postman sucked and didnt' forward my bills (I'm still working on that one). I called Equifax, they said I had to deal with it with my bank, and the bank said I had to deal with it with equifax.
I found this out when I'd gone to go get a car loan for a new car. Two months before, when I'd been shopping for apartments, I'd had my credit history checked by all those apartment places while I was shopping for a place. And because the DC area has an extreme shortage of housing, at least fifteen places had to check my credit (including for new bank accounts and such when I moved). I'd had almost flawless credit two months before. And now I'm not anywhere near the top rating for car loans, because so many people checked my credit history for a damned apartment.
My car intrest rate is a full percentage point above what it should be, because of all of this.
I'm still fighting to get the late payment removed from my credit history, which I've been told should be able to be accomplished, because moving is a reasonable reason for a late payment. However who's removing it is another question, and nobody wants to take responsibility for it.
The fact that no place will give me a top rated low interest loan because fifteen people checked my credit history is absolutely ridiculous. Until this year I'd never once had a late payment, and that one was excusable.
My rating gets screwed by the fact that I needed to find myself housing? That's a bunch of bullhockey. But it's what they rate it on, and most places will not allow you to fight it. When I asked about it with my car loan, they were surprised to see my rating was that low, yet I had only the one late payment. Still didn't mean they'd give me a better interest rate, tho.
When a person turns 18, their criminal records from prior to that age are supposed to be sealed, unless extraordinary circumstances rate opening those files.
A bad credit history is only supposed to be able to follow you around for a grand total of seven years. A good credit history likewise is only supposed to be able to follow you around for ten years.
The reason criminal records are sealed upon the time you hit the age of majority is because it is presumed that whatever you did before then can be attributed to the stupidity of teenagers. Most teenagers pull crap when they're younger that even five years later they'd be horrified by.
Things that follow you around for more than ten years are at that point digging into a portion of your history that really shouldn't matter anymore. If the person has had a wonderful credit history for the last fifteen years, but committed a major credit blunder sixteen years prior to that, if that person is now earning gobs of money and hasn't had a credit slipup once in the last fifteen years, should the one blunder sixteen years ago still prevent him from getting credit now?
A friend of mine was an orphan as a child. Obviously had no parents, and had to earn every dime he got, no safety net beneath him. When he got to college age, he applied for schools, got a scholarship, and proceeded to start attending college. However, a quarter of the way through the semester, the college said his tuition scholarship was somehow messed up, and he was dropped from the rest of the semester, because he couldn't afford to pay for it on his own, and the tuition couldn't be paid until much later because of the scholarship fund's problems. Same thing happened to him the following semester.
Two big hits to his credit, due to no fault of his own. He had to drop out of school entirely after having had a free ride scheduled for him, and started working in a foundry doing manual labor because of it.
Eleven years later, it still seems to follow him. And this credit hit was due to no fault of his own. But he's still denied loans and such, even though he has a great job and a great salary and pays off most things immediately. Because they keep searching his past, and finding that SOME time in his life, he had credit issues in college. That's all they see.
Should something that wasn't his fault that happened more than ten years ago affect his credit now? Not according to the credit bureaus.
Doesn't mean it doesn't still happen anyway.