Sure as a landlord you can chose to make exceptions to allow for cases of people who don’t use credit or who are young. I made such an exception when I rented to a young couple – a young MBA with a very well paying job and his (very) young wife. I liked both of them a lot, a young man had a very well paying job that I verified, and I asked for deposit, first and last (!) month rent upfront. Also, the fact that the young man simply took out a checkbook and signed a check for $3750 immediately meant that they weren’t exactly broke. But as a general rule, you want to verify both the references (preferably from more than one place) and the FICO.

@Andrea – regarding credit limits. It’s unfortunate, but I suspect that credit card issuers need to do it. Not only the credit business is riskier now, they expect losses in the value of their assets. When banks’ (and AmEx is a bank holding company now) expect losses, they need to have more money in reserve before they can lend to maintain the required ratio of money they gave as loans and capital. Hence they have less money to lend. Since credit limit is a potential loan that they may not be able to afford to give, they need to cut it. Banks are hoarding money now because they have no clue of how much losses they’ll have. Just a guess.

I do agree that we need more transparency; I also think we should be able to get our own FICO score for free. Maybe their algorithms aren’t great – my credit score actually went down a little after I paid off my mortgage because I didn’t have real estate type of loans. This is silly – they should take paid off account into consideration. But as to the rest – I agree with Sarah and TMN.

I do agree with TFB about not obsessing with one’s score. I do check my credit report every year, but as long as everything is OK I don’t bother paying for the score. But then I don’t plan on borrowing any time soon; besides, I figure as long as I get a lot of 0% offers in the mail, I am fine.

Is it the fault of “the FICO oligopoly”, that some businesses choose to use the FICO score incorrectly? Well, if they market it to businesses that way, maybe. But I’d say most of the blame lies with the business that chooses to use it for inane purposes. Nobody complains about hammer manufacturers when some idiot tries to use one where a crowbar would be more appropriate. Why blame FICO when the real culprit is the idiot business (like GMAC)?

I think people need to understand the tools they use. I’m all for more information available to businesses and consumers, but beyond that, I don’t see how two vultures fighting over revenue streams affects me even a tiny bit. My records are what they are no matter who has the right to calculate what off of them.

Companies don’t want to spend the time and manpower (money) to wade through credit reports when a FICO score number can be instantly spit out of a computer. FICO offers cheap and easy way for many companies to extract maximum profit by taking short cuts at their customer’s expense.

… but what do you say to TML’s point that a credit card company’s decision to cut your credit limit can impact your credit card score even though you had nothing to do with it. Say, for example, that you keep that oldest card and for years you’ve been getting notices from them that they’ve raised your rates over and over again, which helps your score, and then one day they decide to slash it and drop your score, even though you haven’t used the card for years?

I’m just curious. I think his point was mainly that FICO shouldn’t be so complicated, it’s gotten out of control, their access to consumer information is probably being used in ways that we wouldn’t like if we knew about it.

I will support a change in the system that truly has become a monster! My part of the change is something really radical by not using credit; instead I’m paying cash and really enjoying the experience!