2/26/07: Open Letter to Fair Isaac Regarding its Addition of FICTITIOUS Derogatory Data to Credit Reports and Sale of Defective myFICO Reports
Over the last month I documented that Fair Isaac sold myFICO reports with incorrect score factors to consumers, it ADDS entirely fictitious recent late payments to Equifax and Experian credit reports and it uses those late payments to artificially lower the FICO scores used by most creditors and required for mortgages.
Via e-mail to:
Barry Paperno
Fair Isaac Corporation
February 26, 2007
Hi Barry,
I’m distributing this OPEN letter at various web sites and I will follow up with a national press release regarding the issues we discussed in detail over the last month:
1) Fair Isaac adds INCORRECT late payments to consumer credit reports AFTER accounts were charged off.
Most of my clients are unable to have the INCORRECT late payments after the charge-off removed through disputes with Experian and Equifax. My clients shouldn’t have to pay me to draft those disputes in the first place, but to make matters worse, Experian categorically refused to correct the payment history even when my clients provided to it the myFICO reports with these incorrect late payments.
Since Experian isn’t reporting any of these INCORRECT late payments on its consumer disclosures, it doesn’t look like consumers have legal claims against Experian.
Based on the information and documentation currently available to me, I concluded that Fair Isaac ADDS these INCORRECT LATE PAYMENTS to the consumer reports and it utilizes these entirely fictitious late payments in its FICO score calculations, artificially lowering the FICO scores with FICTITIOUS recent late payments.
Fair Isaac has NOT removed those incorrect late payments from the myFICO Experian report for my client who contacted you directly.
2) It is very disappointing to see that Fair Isaac KNOWS that it provided incorrect score factors to thousands of consumers and it IGNORED my request to alert consumers after I brought this major software bug to your attention.
Fair Isaac FAILED to alert consumers and it FAILED to provide replacement reports even though it KNEW that its products were defective.
Barry, you may want to forward this Open Letter to your legal department for response. I will publicize Fair Isaac’s outrageous conduct in hopes of motivating attorneys to file class actions against Fair Isaac and also to get legislators to take action.
Clearly, self regulation is NOT working.
Fair Isaac had the opportunity to compensate consumers for the defective products it sold and it failed to do so.
Fair Isaac KNOWINGLY adds fictitious derogatory data to consumer reports and it inflicted and continues to inflict horrendous damages on millions of consumers. As Fair Isaac proudly proclaims, its FICO scores are used by most lenders to decline applications and to establish rates.
Fair Isaac forced THOUSANDS of consumers with old charge-offs into subprime mortgages, as it used these entirely fictitious late payments to calculate the FICO scores required by just about all mortgage lenders.
Please advise immediately if any of my conclusions are incorrect,
Christine Baker
http://creditsuit.org/
http://www.mylitigation.net
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9/5/08 Update: To date, Fair Isaac did not respond to this open letter.
