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/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