The potential for fraud, identity theft and other criminal attacks on your personal information is more than enough to keep you busy making certain your personal information is secure and accurate.
But there's more.
A common credit industry information reporting and gathering policy requires additional effort on your part to make sure the credit you've earned is the credit you get.
Three recent federal class action suits filed in the Greenville, SC, U.S. District Court say the three major credit bureaus -- Equifax, Experian and TransUnion -- allow some credit card issuers to engage in a practice with potentially negative consequences for consumers' credit scores. The suits say that's a violation of federal law.
The suits say the credit bureaus allow credit card companies (among them, Capital One, which is not named in the suit) to withhold reporting your credit card account's credit limit to the credit bureaus. Generally, your credit limit can contribute to lowering your score, if you've just about tapped it out. It can also raise your score, if you've judiciously used a smaller portion of it.
If the bloodless computerized scoring system doesn't know your credit limit, it could effectively assign one and lower your score. With lower scores come higher credit costs, pushing up the interest rates on mortgages, personal loans, car loans, credit cards and other credit.
What's in your wallet could be a lot less than there should and it's not just credit card companies that give you a credit limit. Credit card services like American Express, that issue credit with no credit limits, generate similar data that could scramble your credit score, experts say.
Credit card experts say the practice of not reporting credit limits when they exist discourages competitors from siphoning away customers, either because they can't get a real bead on a given consumer's credit card use or because cardholders with lower apparent scores are less desirable.
The suit says under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the national bureaus must follow "reasonable procedures to assume maximum possible accuracy of information in consumer (credit) reports."
However, because credit bureaus apparently haven't always approached data collecting in the manner prescribed by law, three years ago, the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACT Act) amended the FCRA, in part, specifically to identify patterns, practices, and specific forms of activity that can compromise the accuracy and integrity of information furnished to consumer reporting agencies.
With the class action suit and the FACT Act provision recently out of the public hearing stage, consumers can expect change, but only after some time, hoping the practices are corrected to protect consumers, rather than the credit industry's coiffeurs.
That doesn't mean there's nothing you can do to get the credit you are due.
- Get your free credit report from the only FACT Act-sanctioned service AnnualCreditReport.Com. You can actually get three free each year, one from each of the three credit reporting agencies. Check your report for companies that don't report your credit limit and other questionable information. You may have to pay a small fee for your credit score, but you'll need it to check back later to determine if your efforts have improved it.
- Be the best you can be as a credit consumer. Pay your bills on time. Use credit judiciously, by using only what you need and by keeping the ratio of balances-to-credit limits at 50 percent or less. Whenever possible, use cheaper credit, including home equity loans.
Paying off debts is always a better strategy than consolidating. However, a long term strategy, keeping the ratio in mind, is to consolidate and or pay down large balances, leaving one or two credit cards with a moderate, reported credit limit, for emergencies.
After you consolidate credit bills or pay them off, specifically demand, in writing, that the creditor close the account and acknowledge to you that it has done so. With that request also demand that the creditor report the closures to the credit bureaus and the fact that you requested the closure, otherwise it could appear that you have large stashes of unused credit and that can negatively impact your score.
- Shop around for the cheapest rate, best terms and avoid credit cards that don't report your credit limit and credit cards that come with no credit limit. Special zero-interest credit cards can be a windfall if you understand and religiously adhere to the small print. Shop around for all financial services from car loans to mortgages.
- Don't double dip. Applying for two or more lines of credit simultaneously may or may not affect your score right away, depending on the type of credit, and the length of time over which multiple inquiries occur, but it could send the wrong message to creditors that you may be in financial trouble or biting off more than you can chew. Shop around first, then apply for the single card, mortgage, car loan or other financial credit that's best suited to your needs.
Later, if necessary, build credit slowly, without opening too many accounts in rapid succession. If multiple applications lead to opening many accounts in rapid succession your score will suffer.
