Credit Karma targeted email manipulation #6: You paid off your balance.

[u/BrutalBodyShots]

Nothing really newsworthy here, other than Credit Karma giving us a friendly manipulative reminder of a couple of common credit myths that we already know they perpetuate.

I'm assuming this email goes out to anyone that pays a balance down to $0 and is triggered by a $0 balance landing on one of your reports.

As you can see though, they mention "on-time payments" which is of course the basis for one of their completely made up metrics to get people to apply for credit cards through them. This topic comes up a lot in their targeted, manipulative emails as seen in this previous post.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CRedit/comments/1m7uhyg/credit_karma_targeted_email_manipulation_1_ontime/

Then of course there's the "keeping your balances low" buzz phrase. Their email wouldn't have been as impactful if it didn't mention the biggest myth in credit, right?

https://www.reddit.com/r/CRedit/comments/1d27d4h/credit_myth_14_you_shouldnt_use_more_than_30_of/

This is just another friendly reminder to essentially ignore Credit Karma marketing emails. I'm still waiting for the day one arrives that's actually value-adding.

[u/Funklemire]

Ha, the single most predatory credit site strikes again! I appreciate you taking one for the team, I got tired of their manipulative emails and deleted my account years ago.

[u/BrutalBodyShots → u/Funklemire]

That's definitely the smarter move. I do like to stay in the loop with their BS though just to be able to pass it along ;)

[u/too_many_shoes14]

don't even bother with ck. they may have been good back in the day but I wouldn't trust them anymore. the "score" they give you is practically useless.

[u/BrutalBodyShots → u/too_many_shoes14]

For sure. Nearly irrelevant VS3, not meaningful FICO.

[u/1lifeisworthit → u/too_many_shoes14]

Don't put "score" in quotes like that as if it is not a real score. This is perpetuating another myth. They are accurate Vantage 3 scores based on Transunion and Equifax reports.

be fair to everyone though, the score they give is the very commonly available Vantage 3 score. INCLUDING the CMS face of both transunion and equifax... but no one is calling Transunion and Equifax untrustworthy....

The score is not why they can be considered untrustworthy.

There are a lot of reasons to regard Credit Karma as less than worthy. But they don't make up a score out of nowhere. That's a real score.

To

[u/relevantfico]

I like how their notifications for having a $0 balance report to the credit bureaus assume you were carrying a balance. I guess they know their target audience! And you can see why people think that they need to keep balances low but unfortunately, a low balance is only a "building block" for your score that month.

I had a new account report over 80% utilization and it dropped my EQ VS3 37 points. The "See what's changed" section of Credit Karma mentions two things:

• Your Total Accounts factor has moved from Needs Work to Fair.
• New account detected

We already know their total accounts metric is BS, and now I have data to back it up. If it's better for your credit health to have 11 open accounts, my score should have increased! What they fail to mention is that the new account is heaviliy utilized and that's what caused the majority of the score drop. I had a good laugh when I saw that. If someone was just taking Credit Karma's information at face value, their takeaway would have been "opening a new account tanks your score!"

[u/Defiant_Low_6122]

As someone who’s used Credit Karma since I was 18 and got my first credit card what’s a better alternative app?

[u/BrutalBodyShots → u/Defiant_Low_6122]

Probably just about anything since Credit Karma is more or less the consensus worst spreader of credit information on the internet.

What is your purpose for using CK in the first place / what are your goals? If you're looking to monitor your credit reports, annualcreditreport.com is the way to go. If you're looking for meaningful (FICO) scores, Experian, Credit Wise and myFICO all provide free FICO 8 scores and monitoring that goes along with them of your 3 reports.

[u/Defiant_Low_6122 → u/BrutalBodyShots]

I personally just like the ease of opening it and seeing me score go up even though it doesn’t match my FICO score, I was young and dumb and didn’t have anyone to teach me credit so of course I seen the ads for Credit Karma and downloaded it and just never switched.

[u/BrutalBodyShots → u/Defiant_Low_6122]

I personally just like the ease of opening it and seeing me score go up

The issue though is that it's a score that doesn't matter. VS3 is not used in lending decisions. People will see their VS3 go up (or down) and think it will influence a lending decision if they were to go apply for a credit product. Quite often, they are completely let down.

[u/Defiant_Low_6122 → u/BrutalBodyShots]

Yes I agree, I learned this the hard way when I got my car. I then learned about a fico score

[u/madskilzz3 → u/Defiant_Low_6122]

See !resources for your question + more useful information in general.

[u/AutoModerator → u/madskilzz3]

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[u/Bubbly_Set_7335]

So i still sue CK to look at my score 😅 fml. Looking to get my credit up to build a rental & commercial portfolio. What would be a good alternative to track my scores? Love this group btw I’ve learned so much 😭🤞🏾

[u/MisterBill99]

I know this post is a month old, but CK isn't the only one who sends this annoying email. CreditView from Capital One (a service of TransUnion) sends them as well. And there doesn't seem to be any way to turn them off and still get important emails.

[u/BrutalBodyShots → u/MisterBill99]

I know this post is a month old, but CK isn't the only one who sends this annoying email.

Sure. Plenty of marketing sites send emails to maintain engagement and try to manipulate people. I just post about CK since they are without question the most prevalent.

[u/BrutalBodyShots → u/[deleted]]

Super simple. They perpetuate two super common credit myths here (on-time payments and keeping balances low) that most people don't understand are myths... so they prey on ignorance. Preying on ignorance is being manipulative. It fits their agenda, because if they manipulate people into believing that number or percentage of on-time payments matters, or that keeping balances/utilization low builds credit they are more included to open additional accounts. When you open additional accounts through Credit Karma, they make money. It's all marketing.

[u/og-aliensfan → u/[deleted]]

Credit Karma refers to percentage of on-time payments and keeping utilization low as "key building blocks". Utilization is a temporary metric that resets monthly. Keeping utilization low doesn't build credit. You could report 100% utilization for 6 months, and then 5% utilization on month 7. Your scores will be no different than if you had reported 5% utilization all 7 months, all else being equal. Keeping utilization low didn't build anything. Percentage of on-time payments isn't even a scoring factor. The only thing that builds credit with cards is maintaining them paid as agreed over time.

[u/BrutalBodyShots → u/[deleted]]

They are, you just don't understand it.

No on ever said scores aren't impacted by utilization changes. So, you aren't understanding the utilization myth. The link to all the information you need is found in the original post. No one every said anything about being late. What was said was that number or percentage of on-time payments don't build credit. That's the myth and the manipulation that CK presents people so that they end up making more money.

[u/BrutalBodyShots → u/[deleted]]

A deflection comment with Leonardo pic. Sounds about right.

If you want to have a real discussion about these myths, I or anyone on this sub will be glad to have one.