Who the heck ever gave these keepers-of-the-score the authority to make everyone miserable? Where did these denizens of blacklisting get their information? From which cesspool did they first crawl, and how, and why?

Ah, the great unanswered questions regarding the Big Three credit bureaus.

For months, we’ve been paying off debt – mostly medical, accumulated at a time when my trustee decided, in his infinite wisdom, that health insurance was not a viable expenditure as per the words, “health, education, and welfare”. But I digress.

Just as the credit score is inching its way upward, it dropped. Significantly. Why?

Mostly because these places are way too self-important. Are they owned or run by the government? I don’t think so, but there is no information, even on the Internet, about their history or management. It’s quite possible, since they seem to be staffed by idiots, take a lot of money from confused and unsuspecting customers each month, and are hopelessly inaccurate in their collective reporting.

Who the heck gave THEM the right to crawl inside our lives? One theory proposed is that they sprung from the old days of powerful unions and break-your-kneecaps collectors. Possible, I suppose. But no one really knows.

I’d almost rather deal with broken kneecaps.

Let’s look at a few examples:

Your credit card bill is due, say, October 1st. You go online after work, on September 30, to pay the bill. Oops, the company says it can’t possibly process this payment, online no less, within 24 hours, so you can pay a “rush” fee of $12.95, or the payment will be considered late. Yes, it’s a junk credit card, but still – either you pay the fee, or you’re late and reported to the credit bureaus.

Now, credit bureau A will not bother to report that; B will say it was late; C will say it’s on time.

Imagine that you’re on your last, final car payment. You pay it, you celebrate, and then you check your credit report. Credit bureau A says you paid, on time; B says you still owe that payment; C says you owe two payments.

Credit bureau A shows accounts you never owned; B shows the wrong creditors and/or amounts; C has your work history or addresses mixed up with someone else, often an ex-spouse.

Try negotiating with a creditor. They SAY that they’ll remove something from the reports, or not report it at all, but they lie. A lot. Or it takes them two months to take care of it. Why? For heaven’s sake, this is the Internet age!

And why do we have three credit bureaus? Surely one is enough to screw up everyone’s lives, isn’t it? Who the heck is Fair Isaac anyway, and what is his freakin’ problem? Fair, my fanny!