Man says Credit Karma is still misleading consumers despite $3 million settlement
Troy Clark says Credit Karma sent him a message more than a year ago saying he had “out-of-this-world, outstanding approval odds” of landing a certain credit card.
He says he applied but got turned down.
“Why are you telling me that I had an excellent chance of getting a credit card and (I) don’t get it?” he said.
The Federal Trade Commission took legal action against Credit Karma over this exact issue since then.
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The agency accused the company of telling people they were a shoo-in for certain credit cards when they weren’t. The company didn’t admit doing anything wrong but settled for $3 million last year. The FTC said the business would stop “deceiving consumers about ... the odds or likelihood” they’d be “approved for a credit offer.”
But Clark says that a few days ago, Credit Karma sent him credit card offers. Once again, they said his chance of approval (was) “outstanding!” He says he applied and, again, struck out.
“They’ve already gotten in trouble with it once before,” he told Action 9′s Jason Stoogenke. “But it’s still apparently going on.”
Stoogenke took his case straight to the FTC to see if this goes against the legal settlement. He did not hear back in time for this report.
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Credit Karma emailed Action 9:
“We are abiding by our obligations under the FTC Settlement and any applicable rules or regulations. It looks like the user you referenced is talking about our Approval Odds. We make clear on our site that these are your chances of approval, which does not mean approval is guaranteed. We determine Approval Odds by comparing a member’s credit profile to other Credit Karma members who were approved for this product, or whether the member meets certain criteria determined by the lender. There are a number of factors that determine whether someone gets approved for a financial product such as credit score, high credit utilization and accurate information on an application. As we say on our site, there’s no such thing as a sure thing, but Approval Odds may help you narrow down your choices. In fact, members shopping for credit cards on Credit Karma have over 50% higher approval rate than the national average [based on a comparison of Credit Karma member approval rates in calendar Q32022 vs the national approval rates for general purpose credit cards from 2020 according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s 2021 Consumer Credit Card Market Report (36%).”
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