Note: I completely understand the NEED to have some sort of system like "worthiness" to pay debts on essentially "loaned" products/services.
The problem I have with these credit bureaus/systems/scores is that they are a.) made up of arbitrary "scores" and b.) not very "friendly" to the consumer.
Let's say you apply for a cellphone, they pull your credit report and you don't have a horrible credit score (arbitrary number) so you are approved.
So, let's say you have a cellphone contract and you're paying your monthly bill on time, every month for a year. Nothing changes on your credit report, at all.
Now, let's say you miss that one payment. Nice entries about how you missed a payment start showing up. You missed 2 payments so you see a 30 and 60 day late payment. You then resume paying everything and guess what? All that remains is those 2 little red boxes showing you missed a payment, nothing about you making good payments now.
My point about not being "fair" to the consumer, is that for the amount of "protection" our government wants to give us consumers, it's completely beyond me how they could allow companies to not only pull your credit report and report a missed payment, but not be required to be showing all the on-time payments as well.
I mean, I can't be alone on this issue, I don't think a single paying consumer can disagree with me that if a company is allowed to pull your credit report (I understand you are giving them permission, I don't mean it in a unlawful way) AND report missed payments they should be then required to also report all of the on-time payments?
It blows my mind that a system that is basically (for better or worse) completely inter-twined with almost everything in society a SIMPLE thing such as this shouldn't be required?
So, at the end of the day, I have a 765 FICO score, what does that "mean" to me? Absolutely shit. Oh hey, I pay bills on time, GREAT! You should trust me now, but while I'm paying your bill on time, don't help me raise my score (that you so NEEDED in order to "value" me on), only lower my score if I do miss a payment. Makes no god damn sense to me.