[SilasX]

I agree, but in fairness, the way credit agencies use that information is nonetheless gameable. They ignore all of your payment diligence when it comes to bills (utilities, rent, cable, etc) but consider it a positive indicator when you get a credit card that you pay off every month.

This leads people to do something they don't want to do, and is no more informative than paying all those other bills would have been, merely to increase their score. That's a kind of gaming.

[yebyen]

I think you do have to consider too, that these companies also want to give you credit (it is their business,) and in many cases they will likely have insurance that pays when you default.

If the way they have allowed you to "game" this metric results in you signing up for some credit in order to improve your credit score, that's nothing but a net win for them. They got you some credit, that's definitely a score for them.

(I'm not saying that credit card companies would prefer all of their customers to default, they would never be able to buy insurance again... I just want to put it out there that maybe the system works exactly this way, 100% deliberately, because it benefits them too.)