FINANCIAL MYSTERY AND Mayhem: Your Credit Score and Other Scams by the Banksters

I consider myself to be intelligent, educated, and fairly savvy. Recently I had a rude awakening. When it comes to credit scores, and how the banksters operate, I was naive and foolish.


Yes, yes, I knew about all the foreclosures, the people losing their homes, being forced onto the streets. Heck, Michael Connelly wrote a book about it. But I thought since I had cash in the bank and owned my home free and clear, none of this built-in-bankster-quicksand could sink me. Wrong.


My husband and I live in Prince Georges County, a high-tax and high-insurance Maryland suburb of Washington DC. Housing prices have plummeted in Prince Georges with the highest foreclosure rate of any county in the Virginia, Maryland, and DC metropolitan area. Our selling real estate agent clucked sadly when I told him my zip code. 

My home value has dropped over fifty percent and suddenly my once big nest egg – the family farm –  is fried. Foolishly, I thought I could take out a small first mortgage on my home for additional money to buy another home. I was sure the loan was a cinch. I only asked for a third of the home’s sad new value, and I have a brokerage account with money in the bank. 


Enter Credit Score. The bankster loan sharks “randomly” pull one of the three available credit scores from TransUnion, Experian, or Equifax. My scores on the first two are “excellent.” But USAA Bank pulled Equifax where my one lifetime late payment on a checking-account-overdraft-protection-line-of credit popped up. Loan application denied. 


At this point I have talked to a number of loan underwriters, asking questions, learning. Here is what I didn’t know. If you apply for a loan and are denied, your credit score goes down. If you have any credit cards or credit accounts and your balance is fifty percent or more of the credit limit, your score goes down. It doesn’t matter if you always pay on time. Your credit score goes down.

My checking account has been with Bank of America since 1987, and BAC is the bank who reported the late payment on the overdraft-protection-line-of credit. So I called them and when I finally got to the right guy – a supervisor –  I asked, “Don’t you think it’s weird that Bank of America was bailed out for billions of dollars, that I have been a customer since 1987, and BAC is the only company with a report against my credit score?” He made no reply. 


When I explained that this one late payment had occurred in 2010 when I was diagnosed with lymphoma and was undergoing cancer treatment, he said he would talk to the BAC Credit Score Team. I asked if there was a number where I could talk to these people. He said, “No, they are strictly back office.” See me doing the raised palm thing and rolling one eye? 


The boys in the back office.

In the meantime, ask yourself what is in it for the banks to keep lowering credit scores. Where is the money? How about this? 


Banks and these credit score companies make money managing and reporting this information. Everyone gets one “free” credit report per year. But if you want the score, you have to pay for it. People have been conditioned by the media and ads on TV and radios shows --  paid for by the banksters --  to constantly worry and wonder about their credit score. Once the score  goes down, these poor people wonder and worry even more. So they pay for their credit score. If they want a second credit report in their desperate hope their report has improved, they pay for it. 


If your credit score is low, the banks often charge a higher rate on loans, too. See how the banksters make money?


I imagine young whiz kids sitting in bank offices thinking up ways to screw people. I can almost hear them, “Awesome, man! Credit scores. Brilliant idea. We can take even more of their money! The will never see it coming.”


UPDATE, MARCH 21, 2012


Got a call from Bank of America this morning. They received the letter from my oncologist, and removed the BAC late payment report that was wrecking my credit score. Yay!!