A credit score shows how reliable you are as an individual to pay back debt that
you committed to. The reason why CRA (Consumer Reporting Agencies) have weird credit scores, is because of a couple things:
- Their calculation is proprietary; meaning each company has their own way of generating their score.
- This is one reason why your scores are different depending on who you get it from
- Data furnishers (such as banks and other financial institutions) can choose to to any combination, or number, of CRAs to report to (or choose not to report at all).
- This is another reason why your scores are different depending on who you get it from.
The CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) has an industry standard for how your information is reported, known as Metro 2. It's usually submitted in a form of an AUD, ACDV, or a Metro 2 file given to CRAs on a monthly basis. Let me tell you from first hand experience, human error is very real, and sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, and that's even with automation that's been added into the industry lately.
Even with knowing all this, it's still a mess. I've seen someone $100,000 mortgage debt get wiped away clean because an employee didn't want to do extra work.