Alpha Consumer

There's been much buzz recently about how easy it is to manipulate credit scores. A handful of companies, some of which advertise on radio and television, promise to improve poor credit scores, which determine how easy and expensive it is for people to take out loans. I recently spoke with Larry Chiang, founder of Duck9.com, which promises to help people boost their credit score to an impressive 750.

Here's how it works: Duck9.com reminds people to pay their bills on time, which is key to improving credit scores. Students—the service is aimed at those in college—can pay $9.95 a month for this reminder or put themselves on a 25-to-40-day wait list and get the service free. "Twenty-four on-time payments in a row get you to a FICO score over 700," Chiang says. "It's very binary."

My take: Life doesn't need to be this complicated. Pay attention to the bills that arrive by snail mail or E-mail, and you won't need to rely on a company to give you reminders.

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Television advertisements sell us cars, soap, and food. But student loans? Check out this ad from E-Loan. One reader recently told me that she would be suspicious of any company that placed such ads. Would you?

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Chris Amolsch, a criminal defense attorney, has noticed a disturbing increase in the number of people being added to the credit files of those with good credit in an effort to boost their own scores. He says that loan officers, who have access to personal information, sometimes call credit card companies, pretending to be someone else, in order to add clients to the credit record. While such activity is illegal and a form of identity theft, the victims sometimes fail to notice it has happened. "It's probably way more prevalent than you think it is," he says.

One way to avoid becoming a victim: View all monthly credit statements carefully to make sure no extra names have been added. While consumers are notified of such changes, Amolsch says that the problem is most severe among immigrants with limited English or literacy skills who may have difficulty understanding such alerts.

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Ben Popken, editor of the Consumerist, a site where mistreated consumers can express themselves, sees the dark side of our shopping culture every day. The tone of the site—summarized by its tagline, "Shoppers Bite Back"—clearly resonates with its hundreds of thousands of daily visitors. After all, who can resist watching, almost voyeuristically, as readers post the details of their (always negative) experiences. As a reader of the site myself, I asked Popken to answer a few questions. Excerpts from our E-mail conversation:

You receive thousands of complaints from consumers. What trends or commonalities do you see?
A lot of people are frustrated and don't know where to turn. They're bewildered. They try the routes they've been told to but still aren't getting satisfaction. I see a lot of people getting their E-mails ignored by companies. "It's company policy" [is often] used as the magic word to explain away bad customer service.

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