[rvern]

Live a modern life, comfortable by modern standards? You’re right about that. But people in the past lived in worse conditions that were considered modern and comfortable then and credit ratings, by making the market for loans more efficient than it was before (however bad it may still be, it’s better than what it replaced), contributed to the improvements. You want to have your cake and eat it too, and it would be nice if that was possible but it is not because nobody is going to give you cheap loans if it comes with too much risk.

[opencl]

Lots of countries in Europe have nothing remotely resembling the US credit scoring system and people there obviously live comfortable, modern lives and have access to financial services.

[ATsch]

So far, I have had a credit check done once. It was done by me voluntarily, to unlock additional functionality (receiving the purchase before the payment gets cleared), with my explicit consent ("checking your credit involves transmitting the following data to xyz") and had a link to a form I could use to request the data they had on me from the credit rating agency (via post). Very different experience from what it sounds like people in the US have.

[Aditya_Garg]

> You want to have your cake and eat it too, and it would be nice if that was possible but it is not because nobody is going to give you cheap loans if it comes with too much risk.

OP is not saying that he doesn't want anyone performing credit checks. He's saying that he wants to be able to choose a company that values privacy. Currently, there's no option of choice for the consumer, and that's a problem.

[chii]

If the bank loses too many customers because a competing bank is offering to use a better credit checking company, you can bet that they are gonna change.

Most people don't care enough, and only select on price. So the bank gets the cheapest option for nonvisible backends (like credit checks)