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by billh 2514 days ago
I've had credit card companies call me and straight up say "If you pay this right now over the phone with me and pay the $15 telephone transaction fee, this won't hit your credit report"

Between the "Pay for Delete" scams and the gamifying of your credit score through services like CreditKarma I really questions how close these scores are hitting anymore in relation to relative credit risk.
1 comments
mehrdadn 2514 days ago
> I've had credit card companies call me and straight up say "If you pay this right now over the phone with me and pay the $15 telephone transaction fee, this won't hit your credit report"

Does that not qualify as extortion?

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throwawaycert 2514 days ago
The contract you agree to for credit cards or other forms of debt you choose to take on will specify things like late fees and that it's up to the company's discretion whether they report you a late payment to the agencies. If they didn't have this clause, you'd just be complaining that they report everyone indiscriminately rather than giving people a break when it seems appropriate.
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mehrdadn 2514 days ago
> The contract you agree to for credit cards or other forms of debt you choose to take on will specify things like late fees and that it's up to the company's discretion whether they report you a late payment to the agencies. If they didn't have this clause, you'd just be complaining that they report everyone indiscriminately rather than giving people a break when it seems appropriate.

Thanks for making ridiculous assumptions and putting nonsense in my mouth. Nobody opined on anything in the first place. I was merely asking a legal question, because calling someone to demand an immediate payment to avoid direct harm to them sounds an awful lot like extortion, whether I like the approach or not.

If you want to know whether I'm impossible to satisfy or whether I think the company could in fact cut people slack while getting their $15 and avoiding potential extortion, you could just ask me. Yes, I think that's perfectly possible. Call the person up, tell them you'll waive the credit report if they make a payment by the end of the day, and optionally remind them that according to their contract, there is a $15 fee if they pay by phone. There. Now the person gets to spend more than 5 seconds thinking about it to make an informed decision. No need to put nonsense in my mouth.

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throwawaycert 2514 days ago
But you're putting nonsense in the creditor's mouth. You don't know what the conversation was like, you only have the summary of one person who feels wronged.
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mehrdadn 2514 days ago
All I did was I took the story at face value and asked a legal question without saying anything else about anyone. You felt I was somehow "putting nonsense in the creditor's mouth". OK, so why make a ridiculous response instead of just telling me I should wait to hear the other side's story? Or even better, maybe asking what I was thinking in the first place instead of putting your own nonsense in my mouth?
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