Yes. When I first started out, I got a card with a 250UKP limit. The company sent me on assignment and the hotel bill was exactly 250UKP a week. I’d pay the bill Friday morning, rush back to HQ, sign my expenses, get the cash, run to the bank on Saturday morning, pay off the card, so that I could start the same ordeal the next week.
I contacted the bank after a month of this and tried to get the credit limit raised to at least 1,000UKP, as I was putting that much through the card on transactions already and they could see the money was being paid off within 1 fraggin’ day! Nope, no change.
Went to the bank next door and applied for a card with them, they automatically gave me a 4,500UKP limit! So, my own bank, which had known me for years, where I’d never been overdrawn, wouldn’t trust me with more than 250 quid and the bank next door, that didn’t know me from Adam, just handed out wads of cash!
The one thing with DHH’s story is, he never said how much his wife earned, compared to him. He just went on about joint propery, joint returns etc. I don’t know the American credit rating system, but a lot of it over here is based on income (i.e. your pay check), how often you default on payments and a plethora of other checks, it has little, or nothing, to do with the balance on joint accounts or joint tax returns.
It wasn’t until after a page of scrolling that (and 2 days), that we learn she had a higher credit rating. No offence to DHH, but if he had stated that his wife earned the same or more than him at the beginning, there might have been less blowback from the Twitteridiots.
He also rants that Apple has given its reputation over to a sexist algorithm. Apple doesn’t have an algorithm, they have a deal with the bank, that the bank provides an Apple branded credit card. Just a technicality, and that doesn’t mean that Apple shoudln’t have done due dilligence. But until the issue behind the algorithm is cleared up, there is nothing to prove for or against that it is sexist and that the problem didn’t lie with one single parameter that was screwed up on his wife’s rating.
As you say, credit ratings are incredibly complex and it is difficult to prove one way or another, without looking at every input and the alogrithm itself. I hope Apple do do an investigation into the bank and get to the bottom of this, but, after my own experiences in Europe, I’m still in two minds as to whether the gender of his wife actually has anything to do with this.
Edit: Still going down the thread and there seem to be a couple of replies that support his theory.
The bank’s claim that the algorithm is proprietary and cannot be investigated or blamed is disgusting!
