Triggering My Hot Spot
Rhonda Porter on 02 14, 2007
I have blogged about this before…it is really one of my “hot spots”. This morning, not only did I receive an email from this company (oh, I mean SPAM) stating that this is information that I requested, which I did not, it is about something I am absolutely against: selling consumer’s information when they’ve had a credit report pulled to become preapproved. [photopress:trigger.jpg,full,centered]
If you go to their website, they state, “Receive a daily feed of consumers in your target market that just yesterday had their credit checked for a mortgage loan approval.That ’s right, these consumers have just had their credit checked within 24 hrs, specifically for a mortgage loan approval! Now you can provide them with a pre-approval in just a few days for unlimited growth potential.”
Picture this, Mr. and Mrs. Homebuyer meet with a Loan Originator and sign many documents for the preapproval process including disclosure forms that their private information will not be sold. Within hours, they begin to receive relentless phone calls and post cards from other lenders. It’s too bad the credit bureaus are not a party to this agreement and that it is legal for the bureaus to re-sale credit scores, addresses, phone numbers, debts, etc.
I’ll go eat a box of Valentine’s candies and go chill out in a corner somewhere.
About the Author: Rhonda Porter
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11 Responses to “Triggering My Hot Spot”
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Rhonda,
There is a way for the consumer to opt out of this happening. The last number I saw was 888-567-8688 where you can opt out of all the credit repositories being able to sell your information for the trigger leads or to anyone else that is doing targeted marketing with credit information. I do believe that they have to do it 5 days before you would pull credit to keep the trigger lead from being sold after you pull credit.
I don’t think the consumer has any idea how much information a company can get about them from the credit bureaus.
Hi Rhonda, fellow LO here. One thing you can do to stop the phone calls from trigger leads, assuming the borrower isn’t on the DNC list, is to omit the phone number on the 1003 when you pull credit. It’s worked well for my borrowers so far.
Pat, I do omit their phone number and email address. It doesn’t stop the mail. I just think it’s stinky.
Kurt, if you click on the link referring to my original post, their are other numbers that you need to call as well in order to try to prevent this. Some take up to 30 days to process.
When you click on the link to “allegiant marketing’s” mortgage division, there’s nothing available for us to read that would tell us more about this company. That always makes me a little curious.
I did find that their parent company is located in Oklahoma. A search in the state database says the president is Csaba Mathe. I can’t find anything about this person unless this same person lives in Hungary.
https://www.sooneraccess.state.ok.us/corp_inquiry/corp_inquiry-find.asp?:Norder_item_type_id=22&submit=submenu
The bigger question is, WHO IS BUYING THESE LEADS?
If someone out there reading RCG is purchasing the leads, please post, anonymously if you’d like, and tell us how the leads are working for you.
Rhonda, the question I’m pondering is, if this is a legal way for credit reporting agencies to make money under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, then is it ethical for your competitors to purchase these leads? I would guess that there are plenty of mortgage folks out there who ARE purchasing these leads.
Real estate agents have MLS rules and Realtor Code provisions that prohibit soliciting another agent’s listings.
The mortgage industry currently has no such ethical rule of conduct, that I’m aware of.
I don’t know, Jillayne. We personally receive a ton of calls TopDot Mortgage out of California. In fact I received one yesterday. I told the young man that we are on the DNC list and he told me that I need to be on TopDot’s DNC list (I’ve gone through this over and over again with them and I keep visiting the DNC site everytime they call to register my complaint). I asked him if the Gov’s DNC site mattered and he said, “not unless I’m not TopDot’s list to not call”. I know when title companies provide “farm list”, they’re now scrubbing the list to remove people who do not want to be mailed to.
I’ve had borrowers (when I’ve forgotten to remove their phone number before ordering the credit report) who have been called with people representing themselves to be from my company when they are not.
If the mortgage industry had an ethical rul of conduct, it should apply to anyone who originates a mortgage (not just brokers or bankers).
The information just SHOULD NOT be for sale. Unless a borrower WANTED the solicitations to see if they could obtain a better rate but the fact is, they don’t have the choice. Technically, since it’s their information, they should have the choice AND the compensation!
There are several branches of the Branch Network I am with that buys these leads. I refuse to do this and frankly I am surprised that the company does. I have spoken with branches some have had excellent success and others haven’t had much success at all. It is just like any other lead source it’s how hard you work it.
There are branches that are opening up branches in other areas of the country and buying up all these leads that they can. The one in my area has been here for about a year and they finally made the top three list in the state for our company last month. We’ll see if they have any staying power. On a couple occasions I have had clients call me with the offer thinking it was from me.
Edward Jamison who is an attorney and a credit repair “expert” has said that he thinks that this should be an antitrust violation because we HAVE to buy the credit bureau from these three sources and then they are using the information that they got from us to resell to other entities. I am no attorney, but I would think that doing this has to violate some law. I mean they wouldn’t even know these folks were looking for a mortgage if we hadn’t used their service to pull credit.
Rhonda, The consumers don’t have nearly enough control over what the credit bureaus are reporting. Thanks for posting about this.
I just started hearing about this. How is this possibly legal ? For Pete’s sake you can’t find out anything about a relative at a hospital unless tons of forms are signed.
What is the justification that credit bureaus are using to do this ?
Missy, the bureaus “say” they are providing a service to consumers by allowing them to be provided competing offers (which the consumer did not ask for) to them. In reality, the bureaus are $elling the information…it’s all about the all mighty dollar.
I believe this is a way to opt out of these generous offers by the credit bureaus:
https://www.optoutprescreen.com/?rf=t.
[...] The credit bureaus resale your information without your knowledge or consent to whomever is willing to pay the price. I have written about this before at RCG…it is probably one of the most distrurbing aspects of our industry. [...]