They certainly do. And Discover gives you back a tiny bit of money on expenditures, which right now is better to me that flyer points I can't use.

Tons of A paper and business cards. The Black Discover card is a status symbol among CEOs/Ricchers as it requires $500k in annual expenditures to get. At least that was the figure the last time I checked. I think AMEX came out with a version as well.

They are largely going after business accounts that are used for lavish spending and paying on time.

They got after the 1% of credit card debt and pay the best rebates and percentages to get it.

But they are also known to check the shit out of your credit, they are as bad or worse than AMEX, and will pull the rug from out from under you if you get into a situation that you actually need that credit. They should have stuck to charge cards if you ask me.

The entire FICO/Credit Score system isn't constitutionally lawful, IMO. You can't see what is your report, but all businesses can. The "free credit" report, the one that is really free, doesn't compute a score at all. They just report the individual account payment history information. Largely to cover them from liability so you can form a case and prove your innocence in case you find an error in your report. That is the only useful feature of the free credit report, IMO.

It is basically useless to the consumer, and if you go back and look at the details that brought the program about you'll find it was only offered, begrudgingly, to provide the credit companies liability protection. It was then promptly gutted to be useless to the consumer. The bureaus were worried if they divulged a credit score on the free report it'd hurt their revenue from selling the credit reports with scores directly to consumers, which is a bigger cash cow that you would think.

You know the credit reports the bureaus offer for purchase, or the long term credit access called Credit Protection, etc? Now many credit card companies like to do something similar and show you your score, typically from a single bureau they made a deal with or have an ownership interest in, on your mobile account to make you feel better. Businesses don't use that one. It is fairly irrelevant, although it is normally within 40 points or so of your actual Tri-Merge middle score, IME. Businesses don't even see it.

I don't know about you but that doesn't sound like a very fair deal. Any reasonable person would assume the credit report provided by the credit bureau would be the same one they'd provide potential creditors. Adding it in the fine print that it isn't does not protect consumers, and they knew that when they enacted the program.

And don't forget this is all information on the consumer gathered and being sold back to them just in the form of credit report.

I'd think you'd be allowed full access at all times by law to inspect your information personally, considering how important it is. Just like your medical records. You'd never pay for them would you?

I'd also think some sort of burden of proof to add negative information must exist and penalties for misreporting negative information must be present, rather than the completely upside down world we live in now where any two-bit collection agency or attorney can slap a collection on your account that will drag your score down, for 10 years in many cases, with no notice given by the bureaus. There are literally hundreds of thousands of Americans dealing with this today, whether they even know it or not.

Basically they have developed a system where businesses get protection from consumers at all costs, no matter what the collateral damage may be to individual citizens.

Considering the differences in ramifications between a company taking a default on one of their countless lines of credit and a consumer not being able to buy a home, get a job, or at least making it much harder for them to do so, through no fault of their own, seems like a system obviously tilted unfairly away from the consumer when the supposed aim of the program was to protect them.

Any no one seems to be upset about this but me. I can't find people that understand this and think it is an outrage, yet they don't disagree with any of the above.

I guess people in finance aren't that interested in fighting the man. Go figure.

If you want your credit report call a company and apply, let them pull it, and go over that. If you can convince a mortgage person to pull one and give you a copy of the report that is the best possible way to get everything. They will be able to pull a tri-merged aggregated report showing all the info on you from all three bureaus.

The bureaus are regionally based so depending on where you have lived and used credit the information with the different bureaus will not all be the same.

TransUnion is west coast, Equifax is east coast, and Experian is in between. The one you live closest too is generally the most accurate, but companies that pull all three will usually drop the highest and lowest and use your mid score.

I've seen 100+ point swings between bureaus, although that is rare. This effect becomes less and less as financial information becomes digital and the cost to acquire it goes down for the bureaus. Back in the 80s and 90s this was a bigger deal.

People aren't even aware that the product the crediy bureaus sell is simply a report of their personal private financial information, without any compensation to the consumer or limits to the amount of time they can retain it. The limits are usually based on reporting, not retention.

And since we don't know what is in the "proprietary" credit algos they use to compute the scores, we don't know how long negative information may still effect your credit score, even though the transaction that predicated it is not listed or "reported" in the body of the credit report at all! If you take a moment to think about the implications of that, it is positively chilling.

What is to stop them from tinkering with the formula and not telling anyone? How many times have they changed it in the past? How would we even know? Seems like an awful lot of power to be completely privatized with a laughable amount of anything that could possibly be construed as oversight from the Federal government, much less consumer transparency and protection.

Plus you wouldn't believe the information they have on you going back since you first started renting house or filling our a job application. All supplied with information they got without paying you a dime for it.

Oh and they have no competition, in case the tone of OP's email didn't make that abundantly clear.

That email says to me the person that wrote it has already made up their minds to disregard the complainants and anything they may have to say.

Those complaints don't have a prayer of even being read by human eyes much less acted upon.

The entire system is a sham, the consumers get royally screwed, and, to add insult to injury, they get sent a bill for the privilege once it is done.

/rant over

My town accepts it for taxes at a flat $50 fee. I got a 1% cash back discover to cover my first half payment of $6k. I assumed with my 826 credit score and $350k+ household income there would be no issues. These fuckers gave me a $5k credit limit. I called up to ask for more, and they told me it was not possible. I don’t understand how they are in business.

^This. My discover is my oldest car and I’m not going to take an average account age hit over this. They just won’t get another penny in transactions fees from me. Cashing out my cash back balance and retiring the card to the deepest corners of my safe.