Tag Archives: experian

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Can a Charged-Off Credit Card Help Your Credit Score?

A not-too-unusual scenario for those trying to repair their credit

This happened to me, and I know it has happened to several clients of mine as well. Here’s the scenario:

You have a credit card account that was charged off a couple of years ago. You assume (correctly) that it is hurting your credit scores. After sending a few rounds of dispute letters to the credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion–the “big 3”), you are unable to get it removed. During those months that you are working through the dispute letter process however, your credit scores see a big jump. What happened?

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Incorrect Address Lowers Woman’s Experian Score 80 Points

Of all the things that go into a credit score, a discrepancy in mailing address often gets overlooked. It’s important that your address be correct, current, and consistent among all 3 of the major credit bureaus. The Guardian features one woman’s story of what happened due to a lag in public records:

I have no skeletons in my financial cupboard so was surprised to see that in April my Experian rating had dropped from “excellent” to “good” – a massive fall of 80 points. It appeared that Experian had never received details of my address at the time. It explained this was down to the way the local authority updated its electoral roll.

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Auto Loans Reach All-Time High

Experian released a report on auto loans today. Here are the high points:

  • The average credit score for a new vehicle loan dropped slightly, going from 714 in Q1 2014 to 713 in Q1 2015. The average used vehicle score moved slightly higher, from 641 in Q1 2014 to 643 in Q1 2015.
  • The average used vehicle loan was $18,213 in Q4 2015, up from $17,927 in Q4 2014.
  • The average interest rate for new vehicles was 4.71 percent in Q1 2015, up from 4.54 percent in Q1 2014. Similarly, the average interest rate for used vehicles increased from 9.01 percent in Q1 2014 to 9.17 percent in Q1 2015.

So interest rates have inched up, along with car prices. Elsewhere in the report, they mention that the length of loans is increasing as well. Some people are even taking out 84 month (!) loans for used cars.

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Credit Bureaus Change the Way They Handle Disputes

Big news out of the New York Attorney General’s office. From CNN:

Experian (EXPGF), Equifax (EFX) and TransUnion, the three main agencies that track your credit, have agreed to follow new guidelines to handle disputes on your reports, according to a settlement announced Monday by the New York Attorney General.

This is huge news. Disputing information on credit reports is a big part of credit repair, and if you’ve ever gone through it, you know it can be frustrating to watch the credit bureaus acting in seemingly incomprehensible ways to simple requests like “this account isn’t mine; please delete it.”

It’s not clear at the moment how this will affect people in other states, if at all. The settlement could prompt action from other states’ attorneys general in a piecemeal fashion. The feds could even get involved in the form of the CFPB.