Credit score discrimination

Discrimination is alive and well when it comes to credit.

I moved recently to a place that uses BC Hydro. I hadn’t needed to go through them directly at my last place, but had been with them for many years prior.

I was told I had to allow a credit check or pay a $400 deposit. I said: but I have a long history and was never even a day late with a payment. I was told that was two years ago and I could have become a bad payer in that time, so my previous history didn’t count.

So they did a credit check and the deposit was waived. What if I had shown a lower credit score because of a dispute or a fraud? (That actually happed a few years back.) Well, then I would have had to pay the deposit or live in the dark.

We live and die by our credit score these days. Everyone wants to check it, and nobody cares why your score might be low, even though it gets lowered every time it gets checked. It gets lowered if you have too much credit, too little credit, if you use credit too much or too little, or if you are close to your limit, not over, just close.

Judging a person solely on their credit score without caring about the context is about as discriminatory as it gets, yet businesses use it against people, good people, every single day with no reprisal.

It’s high time that practice was stopped.

Ken Quesnel