Saturday, October 14, 2006

Fair Isaac filed anti-trust suit against Equifax, Trans Union and VantageScore

Fair Isaac sues credit-scoring companies

Thursday October 12, 3:11 pm ET

Fair Isaac Corp. said Thursday that it has filed an antitrust lawsuit against three agencies that have partnered to launch their own credit-scoring system, VantageScore.
Fair Isaac said the three agencies—Equifax Inc., Experian Information Solutions Inc. and TransUnion—are using anti-competitive practices to market their new product.

Minneapolis-based Fair Isaac has its own credit-scoring system, FICO. All three defendants have the ability to set a price for what a lender pays for FICO scores, and can also set prices for VantageScore. This ability allows the companies to unfairly promote their product by manipulating pricing, Fair Isaac argues.

“We have competed against the credit-report agencies’ scoring products for many years, and we are happy to compete on a level playing field,” said Tom Grudnowski, CEO of Fair Isaac, in a statement. “However, the recent agreement between the three powerhouse agencies unfairly threatens our ability to compete and inhibits the ability of consumers and lenders to enjoy the benefits of continued innovation, choice and competition in the credit-information marketplace.”

Fair Isaac (NYSE: FIC - News) is a credit-scoring and software company.

Published October 12, 2006 by the Minneapolis/St Paul Business Journal

This has to be about as absurd as it gets! Hopefully they’ll waste a TON of money on suing each other and MAYBE somebody will file the lawsuit on behalf of consumers.

After all, creditors pay PENNIES for credit reports and scores and the CRAs and Fair Isaac conspire to OVERCHARGE consumers, charging literally thousands of percent more to consumers than to businesses for the same products.

CreditData Southwest paid 15 cents per FICO score

There you have it ... and what are the “consumer advocates” doing?

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