Equifax refused to restore his credit score or explain why it dropped to zero, until Go Public started asking questions.
Only then did the company point to its little-known policy: If a credit file sits inactive, the consumer may be labelled “unscoreable” and their score reset to zero. Tregear says the last time he checked, before it disappeared, his score was around a more respectable 700.
Go Public has since found a major flaw in consumer protection rules — that there are no laws or oversight on how credit scores are calculated, leaving credit bureaus to do what they want.
Consumer advocate Geoff White says that gives credit bureaus too much power, with no transparency.
I’m in the US but had a similar thing happen to me when I was first getting credit and had no history. I figured it would be a safe bet to apply for a card with my bank at the time, and they denied me citing my credit score: 0. At the time I just laughed and applied for another card elsewhere, who did actually accept me. After a few months I checked and saw I was assigned a real score somewhere in the low 700s.
I’d understand dropping a score after 10 years without credit, but the 2 in this case is very low.