Experian appears to be offering this new service where you can add your electric, gas, water, and wireless phone bills to your credit report. Has anyone signed up for this?
Perhaps those people who spend more on those types of bills may be a larger credit risk and/or it provides creditors with a better understanding of your monthly expenses, which could hurt or help, depending on whether you’re above or below what their algorithms determine you likely spend on those utilities.
Experian is advertising it as providing a boost to your credit, but I would’ve thought that lenders assume you’re paying your bills, otherwise they’d show up as collections. Also, what’s the likelihood that you pay your credit cards and all other loans on time each month, but don’t pay your electric bill on time?
Just wanted to start a thread on the discussion of this “benefit” or scheme.
(Not sure if this is a good link, or whether the boost discussion just happens to be on that page for now, but maybe someone can find a deeper link and post.)
Seems like something they could charge money for, but it looks like they aren’t. Maybe that’s something they are thinking of doing in the future. To that end, for people that don’t have much credit history and pay their bills on time, I would say they should sign up for this right away.
I sought to sign up for this because anything that boosts my score is
$$MONEY!!$$
So they totally had me in palm of hand when waving the prospect of easy score enhancement. But I dropped out when they started asking me for the username and password of the bank accounts I use to pay my utility bills. There were two problems:
Privacy invasion . . them asking for personal data they did not already have. They already have too much of my personal information!
I pay all my utility bills with a rewards credit card. Doesn’t everyone? So their assumption I pay a different way was weird from the get go.
Anyway, bottom line, no score boost for me. Guess they find my type undeserving.
Some people don’t have the bills in the first place.
You could have two 20 somethings with identical credit histories where one is living on their own and paying rent and utilities and 100% of all bills on time for several years and the other is living on their parents dime their whole life. But if they both have a credit card in their name they might have exactly same credit history.
I see this as a tool for folks either recovering their credit or establishing credit. I don’t see this as a tool for folks with established histories and numerous accounts preexisting.
He said they were asking for login credentials for bank accounts that he pays his utility bills from. He’s interpreting that request as them assuming he pays his utility bills from “bank accounts” rather than “credit cards.”
And no, @shinobi, I don’t pay my electric and gas bill with a CC because of their 3.xx% “convenience” fee.
Sort of. I mean, some folks might walk in and pay with cash, I suppose.
Or perhaps there could be customers who have no bank account. These folks might mail in a postal money order.
But generally speaking, most folks probably pay either with a paper check or with a CC. It seemed to me Experian was allowing solely for the former alternative in their application process for Boost.
Huh? Do you not believe they take security seriously? They say it every time they’ve been hacked … 'er every time the public has found out they were hacked. I mean, CRAs as a whole have a great IT security record.
//tongue in cheek mode off
Just in case you might not think they’re great at security here is an even more egregious example of a company’s lack of security than Equifax’s. Please have your glycerin handy before reading the first paragraph.
