Wow, that’s a new one to me…never heard of anything like that before. What an awful situation to have to deal with!
It’ll be very interesting to see how all this all shakes out as the matter is investigated further. I don’t doubt that there could be more to the story than it first appears; my main point was that given the historical reality of sexist discrimination by N. American banks (as well as sexist algorithmic bias), it wouldn’t be surprising if there was discrimination involved.
That’s interesting. In the US the length of time at an address can boost your credit score (eg not moving around a lot) but the property itself or previous owners don’t count.
Sorry…how does taking one Twitter rant that may not even be true and on the face of it does not seem logical make for a good discussion topic? Isn’t Apple pretty good at making money? They didn’t get into the credit card business for the fun of it. Why in the world would they do something like this on purpose.
If you read the follow up posts, you’ll see that the story has been picked up by new sites, including Bloomberg - and the New York Department of Financial Services is investigating. I didn’t just post this on a whim - but I did want to post the source tweet that appeared to start this chain of events.
My initial reaction as well. One person is not a scientific data set. But a lot more people have come forward and now an investigation is opening.
I may not have said this up front, but I didn’t post this because it was Apple-related; but because the originating tweet talked about the algorithm being the basis for determining the credit limit. The other thing about this that interested me was that they were able to get the limit adjusted by talking to enough people.
Now, where it could be an Apple-specific issue is whether the limit was adjusted because the guy was a prominent developer. Apple is a particularly PR-centric company in giving exceptions to its rules. They made an exception to their app store rules for Uber to allow them to do screen-reading (https://gizmodo.com/researchers-uber-s-ios-app-had-secret-permissions-that-1819177235).
So for me - there are several points of interest in this story:
There may be other related points, but these are the ones that have immediately occurred to me. And I’d have these questions if the tech company was Google or Microsoft or Amazon or any other big tech company.
All good questions. And yes this goes far beyond Apple. Algorithms and their potential for bias can affect almost every aspect of our lives.
Gender is easily identified from a few factors even if not explicitly asked for on an application. I would think Goldman drives most of this decision but who knows. Will be an interesting topic to follow.
Speak of the devil… Look what I just saw online:
I’ve heard Leo mention the book a couple of times.
Bought it with my Audible credit this morning. Unfortunately, it is only available in English, I would have preferred a German version, then my wife could have listened to it as well.
The other question is, did Apple do anything?
AFAIK, the card is from Goldman Sachs, so it would be their support staff and their algorithm. Does Apple have any involvement or say in the credit rating matter?
I’m not defending Apple here, just genuinely interested, as this is “just” a branded card from GS, with benefits for purchases from Apple.
It’s a fantastic book; along with Zuboff’s “Surveillance Capitalism”, I think it’s essential reading for our times in terms of understanding the tech-scape we’re living in. Definitely central to the potential issues in this discussion. The author reads the audio version and does a fantastic job…very passionate and engaging. I’m sorry your wife won’t be able to enjoy it, though…that sucks.
I need to see more data as I have a higher credit limit than Leo because my credit score is slightly higher. I’m not buying that they are equal in credit scores or I would have a lower limit. This doesn’t pass my sniff test or reality.
My wife and I both got Apple Card’s and except for personal information all the numbers put in were the same, we got the same credit limit. I know our credit scores are very similar too. Maybe reading too much into this.
I agree that it seems improbable, however New York has opened an investigation into the issue. So it seems like there could more here than just coincidence. Hopefully it is just that - coincidence.
I don’t know that I would expect scores to be identical - my wife and I have different scores. But I would expect scores to be comparable - there’s a 5-10 point difference between ours, depending on which rating agency is being referenced.
And I definitely wouldn’t expect such a substantial difference in credit limits between spouses. From the screen shot on DHH’s Twitter post, she had a credit limit of $57.24 and his was 20X that amount (which would be around $1,144.80).
So I don’t know - it really does seem like it shouldn’t happen. If nothing was wrong - then why change her credit limit to match his? And why not provide a basis for how the limit was determined in the first place?
To me that’s the suspicious part. If she got a low limit for a reason that was justifiable such as something bad on her credit report, then a phone call would not have raised it. So the phone call to me seems like they saw an error and corrected it. Now whether or not that error was related to her being a woman is yet to be determined.
It could have been an error, however given that Steve Wozniak’s wife also had a similarly reduced credit limit, tell me that - if an error, it wasn’t a single incidence.
I see less benign reasons for the limit being raised myself - like it being a PR move by Apple to keep a preferred developer happy (it was a ‘VIP bump’). But I still find it very odd that that staff kept referencing the ‘algorithm’ as the reason for the credit limit.
And, I apparently missed this in the thread, Apple staff told them to look at TransUnion for their credit scores as a possible reason - and her TransUnion credit score was higher than his. So she had a higher credit score, yet got a limit of $57.24 while he got a limit 20X higher - and all it took for her to get a matching limit was speaking with Apple management.
To be clear - I’m not saying DHH did anything wrong here at all. I am wondering, however, at a financial product put out by a tech company can not only have such a discrepancy in credit limits, but have such flexible restrictions for 'VIP’s that those limits can be removed if someone makes enough noise.
I’m still trying to figure out a limit of $57.24 for anyone? It’s a ridiculously low amount and not much good for purchasing anything…especially at the Apple store! 
. The amount just seems like an error.
The rest of this discussion is interesting and the fact that others have come forward makes it worth following.
Yes. That’s the kind of limit you get on your first card when you are like 18 and have no credit.
Even I had a bigger limit than that at 18… 