Originally Posted by
sdsearch
The "part of the month this bureau, part of the month that bureau" pattern was definitely fact (observed by multiple individuals checking their pulls). I don't remember where the explanation of why Citi was doing that came from. You'd have to find the many-years-old threads (probably from the days when 25k Citi AA cards were churnable at the rate of 2 at a time every couple months) to figure that out. (Ie, it would likely be a thread that
predates CandymanJim's "the jig is up" thread from late 2009.)
There could be other factors besides price. There could be some relationship between certain banks and certain bureaus, for example, because someone high up at one went to work at the other. It could be that depending on what computer system the bank uses and what computer system a particular bureau uses, some banks interface better to EXP while others interface better to TU. It could be not that EQ has poor prices but that they are slower to return data from pulls than EXP or TU, so banks hate using them for that reason. Who knows. (I don't know any of these reasons to be factual, I'm just pointing out how many different possiblities there are for how this decision
could be made.)
But the point is that every bank makes this decisiion individually. They don't care whether they're using the same bureau as another bank or not.
You care collectively, but the banks' decisions are not made collectively. And since no one except churners cares about this issue, you're not likely to change bank's minds. But the point is they're not likely doing it to make it hard for churners (we're just too small a part of their customer base to make big decisions like this based on that), they're undoutedly doing it for one of any number of other "simpler" business and/or technical reasons.
You are definitely right on your analyis and evaluation. Unlike consumers that have access to a lot of comparision data, banks dont have the benefit of knowing the pricing provided to their peers and competitors, although there is some informal sharing of information. Most companies, and remember the bureaus are an oligopoly, with no competitors wont agree to a most favored nation pricing structure with their customers, so the deals each bank has are negotiated separately. Banks also have to decide the term of the agreement, and pricing is affected by term, as is the guarenteed volume or bundles. Banks are also buying a combination of service from the bureaus including the front end soliciation credit review, so the back end pulls are only one of the services provided. That also means that the business has to have a good handle on what the volume is likely to be 3 or 5 years out, for instance. Relationships do play a large role, as does the embedded nature of the bureau in the systems and process as has been suggested. Churners are not part of the equation.