Mar 29

There are various variations of payment protection insurance, otherwise known as ppi, that show up on many goods but essentially this is a kind of insurance and you’ll have a case for ppi claims when you have taken out car finance during the last 10 years.
With petrol charges crushing customers’ extra earnings due to the regular rising costs it might be a cause for concern for those who also need to pay for car loan ppi.
The increase in the price of oil is normally 15.8p a litre much more in the pump than last year and supermarkets have cautioned these surging fuel prices are sapping customer spending power.
Previously year customers have spent £400 million a smaller amount amongst information that oil costs are continuing to go up; even though the petrol prices in the united kingdom have already hit a record-breaking £6 a gallon.
The typical unleaded price, which is 115p a litre, signifies the shift in customer spending from the store checkout to the forecourt.
It now costs almost £3.50 more to refill a tank on average than it did in January of this year.
Retailer Morrison’s’ annual numbers show that its fuel sales taken advantage of the larger oil prices, rising 18% during the last year on a like-for-like schedule. That inc Read more…

Tags: ppi claims

Mar 25

James O’Keefe — the man behind the recent video that caused NPR executives to lose their jobs – sent an email to supporters asking for help to pay off $50,000 in credit card debt.

O’Keefe says in his email that he and his friends “took a leap of faith and racked up serious credit card debt to expose NPR.” Asking other like-minded individuals to pay off his credit card debt is, in my humble opinion, a little appalling. Here he is, trying to expose the “duplicity” of organizations such as ACORN and Planned Parenthood, when he’s dodging the responsibility of paying his own bills.

Is this really a good example of upstanding citizenry?

When an individual accumulates debt to further his career, and then asks others to pay for it, well, it is another sad testament to O’Keefe’s character. (O’Keefe has been exposed as a liar and a criminal — he was charged with tampering with Sen. Read more…

Tags: Card Debt, Credit Card, Credit Card Debt, Debt

Mar 24

Are you confronted with a possible short sale or foreclosure on your home? If so, you may be wondering how long it will take your FICO scores to FULLY recover after one of these bombshells hits your credit reports.

It’s a great question, and it happens to be one that we receive emails about every day. Well, now we have some hard data from FICO that finally helps clear up all the confusion around FICO scores, short sales, and foreclosures.

Check out this chart: Estimated Time for FICO Score to Fully Recover, which was released yesterday on one of FICO’s blogs.

Essentially, what FICO’s telling us is that if you have a good starting score (780), it will take your FICO score about 7 years to fully recover. In addition, there’s absolutely no difference in recovery time among short sales or foreclosures. The ove

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Tags: Short, Short Sales

Mar 22

Dear Creditnet: My wife and I have excellent credit scores, but we used to only have one no annual fee credit card with a limit of $10,000 (balance is paid off each month).

I recently opened another credit card with better rewards and it has a $20,000 credit limit. I’ve been told not to close out our first credit card account, but should I lower the credit limit on it to somewhere around $500 since we won’t be using it?

Or will our credit scores be negatively affected by lowering our available credit limit from $30,000 to $20,500?

Answer: Thanks for your question, and congratulations on upgrading to a better rewards credit card!

Even though you don’t plan on using the old credit card much anymore, it would be best for your FICO scores to leave the account open with the same $10,000 credit limit. Don’t

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Tags: Limit

Mar 21

FICO, FICO, FICO…we’re all familiar with the dominant credit scoring system used in the financial services environment.  But, did you know that there are different “flavors” of FICO scores used by auto, credit card and other lenders?  In fact, if you’ve applied for a credit card or an auto loan in the past 15 years your FICO “Industry Option” score was probably pulled by the lender.  So, what is an industry option FICO score?

An industry option score is a semi customized scoring model tuned specifically to evaluate risk for a certain type of financial services product.  Think of it this way…if you are an auto lender then aren’t you most interested in how your applicants have paid their past auto loan obligations?  Of course you are.  You’re concerned about how they’ve paid all of their past obligations but auto loan experience will likely be the most important in your mind.

The FICO industry option scores take a deeper look at how the consumer has managed specific types of credit obligations and assigns a score the predicts how well the consumer will pay back THAT type of debt.  There are five FICO industry option scores – auto, bankcard, personal finance, installment and mortgage.  The auto, bankcard, personal finance, and installment are the oldest of the industry options.  The mortgage version is the newest.

The auto option is built to be used by auto lenders, auto financepanies and auto dealers in their lending decisions.  The bankcard option was built to be used by bank credit card issuers.  The personal finance option was built to be used by financepanies, such aspanies that finance furniture, appliances, TV’s and audio equipment.  The installment version was built to be used by installment lenders.  And finally, the mortgage option was designed for mortgage lenders.

Let’s take a deeper look at one of the mostmonly used industry option scores….auto.  The auto option was built on credit files that had an auto loan.  It predicts credit behavior on auto loans, specifically.  Even if you don’t have an auto loan on your credit report, it can still predict how you will pay back an auto loan.

Don’t forget, there’s still the generic FICO credit score, which can be used by any lender for any reason.  The primary difference between the FICO Industry Options and the generic FICO score is that the industry option predicts credit behavior for a particular industry while the generic FICO score predicts credit risk on any account from any industry.  And, your industry option scores are NOT going to be the same….and they won’t be the same as your generic FICO score.  For example, you could easily have a set of FICO scores that looks like this;

Generic FICO score – 750

FICO Aut0 – 740

FICO Bankcard – 764

FICO Personal Finance – 741

FICO Installment – 755

FICO Mortgage – 763

They’ll be close, but they won’t be the same.

The industry option FICO scores are not currently available for retail sale to consumers.  However, with the new Risk Based Pricing Rules and the eventual implementation of the Fair Access to Credit Scores Act in July 2011 we’ll be seeing them for the first time with adverse action letters.

John Ulzheimer is the President of Consumer Education at SmartCredit, the credit blogger for Mint, and a Contributor for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.  He is an expert on credit reporting, credit scoring and identity theft. Formerly of FICO, Equifax and Credit, John is the only recognized credit exper

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Tags: Scores

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