Buyer FAQ

We recommend that buyers use the following process. Step 1: Pull your credit reports (either directly from the three bureaus, or by creating a CreditKarma account and viewing 2 of the 3 through their interface). Once you have determined that there's no negative information in your credit file, work to understand what factors are contributing to a less than desirable credit score. If it's lack of history, older tradelines are likely to be helpful. If it's high utilization on existing debt accounts, credit cards with high limits may be just what you need.

A credit report is comprised of all of the financial and demographic information that a credit bureau knows about you. This information may include open/closed credit accounts, payment history on those accounts, the presence of bankruptcies, and personal data such as contact information and employment history. A credit score is a numercal value that is provided by a credit bureau to its customers which is meant to assign a risk value to a consumer based on the information contained in their credit report.

FICO is short for the Fair Isaac Corporation. In 1989, FICO introduced the concept of a FICO Score, as a standardized way for lenders to gauge creditworthiness when making consumer loan decisions. There are several FICO score models in use, with FICO 8 being the most commonly used. FICO scores usually range from 300 - 850 (though some versions of the FICO Score for certain indsutries may range from 250-900). Lenders generally view higher FICO scores as indicating less risky borrowers. Vantage Scores are a proprietary score developed by the three main credit reporting agencies in the US. Like FICO, the score ranges from 300-850. They are meant to serve as an alternative to FICO. While the credit score ranges between FICO and Vantage are the same, there are some differences in their scoring model which makes it difficult to say that a 700 FICO has the same risk profile as a 700 Vantage.

There are a lot of reasons why it's beneficial to take care of your credit score. Aside from helping determine whether or not you are approved for a loan, your credit score may also drive the pricing of any loan that you are approved for. In addition, your credit score may determine whether or not you are required to put down a deposit when signing up for a service (such as a utility), as well as factoring into your pricing on services like car insurance. Some landlords also run credit checks to determine whether or not they want to approve a potential applicant for housing.

FICO Credit Scores are generally categorized as follows: 300-579 is poor; 580-669 is Fair; 670-739 is Good; 740 - 799 in Very Good; and 800+ is Exceptional.

The primary variables used to determine your credit score are: Payments History (35%); Amounts owed (30%) including credit utilization; Length of Credit History (15%); Credit Mix (10%); Recent Credit Applications (10%). Vantage uses those same categories, but without percentages. According to Experian, Payment History is Extremely Influential; Total Credit Usage is highly influential; Credit Mix and Experience is Highly Influential; New Accounts Opened is Moderately Influential; and Balances and available credit is Less Influential.

You can often see some version of your credit score by logging in directly to a credit bureau (like experian.com), logging into a credit card company which reports this info (such as Chase.com), or by utilizing a 3rd party credit monitoring service (such as CreditKarma.com).

PiggyBackerz.com loves CreditKarma.com. It's a free service (owned by Intuit) that allows consumers to see their Vantage 3.0 Scores (at both TransUnion and Equifax). Consumers may also view their full credit report at both of those agencies through the CreditKarma interface.

If you have negative information on any of your credit reports, you generally have two options. Option 1: Wait it out (hard inquiries 2 years, most negative credit items will drop off your credit report after seven years, with bankruptcies hanging around for 10 years). Option 2: you can try disputing the negative information. This may not work well for accounts that are still open and reporting on a monthly basis, as any accurate historic information is likely to be reported again in subsequent reporting cycles.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives consumers the right to dispute any incorrect information that is found on their credit report. Each of the credit reporting agencies have their own process for submitting a dispute. You must file a dispute with each bureau that is reporting the incorrect information.

Let's start off answering this question by talking about who DOESN'T tend to benefit from this practice. Generally speaking, consumers with NEGATIVE information (such as bankruptcies, chargeoffs, late payments, etc) in their credit profile do not tend to see a meaningful improvement in their credit score from PiggyBacking. This is because NEGATIVE (or derogatory) information in your credit file tends to be heavily weighted when calculating your credit score. As such, we'd always steer anyone with negative information on their credit report to first address those issues BEFORE attempting the purchase a tradeline. Buyers who simply have little credit history or high utilization limits on their existing tradeline accounts tend to be good candidates for PiggyBacking Credit.

While the price of the tradeline may be a budgetary consideration, there are two attrbiutes that you are trying to influence when determining what (and how many) tradelines to purchase. You are trying to influence your own overall average age of accounts as well as your own average overall credit utilization. (Provide Example).

Once you are removed as an authorized user from a credit card, that tradeline will cease reporting to your credit report. The historic information relate to that account will remain, but it's impact on your credit score will likely begin to diminish after 3-6 months.

Once a tradeline is reported to your credit report, the attributes of that account (age, credit limit, utilization, payment history, etc) will likely be factored in with your other existing credit accounts to determine an updated credit score.

The prices of tradelines vary based on the age and the limit of the card that you are purchasing. All else equal, older cards fetch a higher price than newer cards, and higher limit cards fetch a higher price than lower limit cards. Feel free to browse our inventory for pricing.

Possibly. If you are looking to open a credit card with a specific bank, such as Capital One, you would likely want to purchase a tradeline from a different issuing bank. Also, if you have been banned as a customer from any bank in the past, you would not want to purchase a tradeline serviced by that bank. If you had a charged off account with Bank of America 15 years ago, for example, it's possible that they could decline adding you as an authorized user on another card account which they service.

piggybackerz currently supports two payment options. The first is to checkout using an eCheck at time of purchase. eChecks may take several days to clear, which is the reason why a time difference exists between when an order is completed vs when a tradeline reports to the credit bureaus. Buyers may also request to send funds to PiggyBackerz ahead of time by initiating an ACH or Wire transfer ahead of the purchase. By paying in this fashion, we will already have received your funds before your purchase which extends the purchase deadline for any tradeline by 4 days.

Yes. While our service guarantees are backed by our refund policy, you have 1 week from order completion to submit a refund request. This is so that we can pay our sellers in a timely fashion once they've completed your order.

Once you place an order, you can cancel the order anytime prior to your payment clearing.

Generally speaking, you are able to extend your order in 1 month increments (at 50% of the 2 month rental price) so long as the seller is willing to extend for an additional month, which is often the case.

In order for a buyer to qualify for a refund, buyers must not have any freezes on their credit profile. Refunds will be given if the credit utilization reported for a purchased tradeline exceeds 15% utilization, does not maintain a perfect payment history during the order, does not report for two consecutive reporting periods to the buyer's credit profile, or does not report to at least 2 of the three primary credit bureaus (Transunion, Equifax, and Experian). Refunds will not be given for any other reason, including if the buyer did not experience an improvement in credit score.

Refunds can be requested via our online refund request form. All refund requests must demonstrate that the buyer's order missed on at least one of our guarantees. Refunds are issued based on individual tradelines purchased, and not based on the overall order. For example, if the buyer purchased 3 tradelines, and one of the tradelines failed to meet every guaranty, only the cost of that indivudal tradeline would be refunded. The other two tradelines would not be eligible for a refund.

While we are not lawyers, the short answer is that every indication points to "yes". The longer answer - in the 50 year history of consumers using their tradelines to benefit someone other than the primary cardholder, there's not been any example that we are aware of where this practice has been deemed illegal. In fact, the practice of conferring the "benefits or burdens" of a tradeline to authorized users (particularly spouses) of the primary cardholder has been codified into federal law via the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) of 1974 (Regulation B). There have been numerous lawsuits brought by government agencies against companies offering tradelines for sale, and in these lawsuits the legal issue has never been whether the practice of buying/selling of tradelines is legal. The issue that they raise is generally false advertising/promises that were made to the consumer.

It depends on who you ask, and on your perspective. The context of the ECOA Regulation B was that as divorce became more common in the United States, women often found themselves at a financial disadvantage after the divorce since their husbands often had most of the financial accounts (inluding credit cards) in their own name. Once a divorce was complete, the ex-wives found themselves without much (or any) of the established credit related to the household's finances. By requiring credit card companies to report credit history fopr a tradeline for authorized users of the card, the federal government made sure that the husband and wife would each inherit the related history of a tradeline. As determining who was/was not a spouse in these situations could be a burden, it becauase common practice for credit card companies to report all related credit history on a card to all authorized users. As a result, families discovered that they could use the authorized user status to confer positive payment history to their children (or even friends). As a result, people who are more likely to have great credit are able to extend the benefits of that credit to people in their social circle. Some would view this as an unfair advantage that contributes to economic disparity. Making tradeline history available to consumers who may not have access to family with positive tradelines helps level the playing field when it comes to establishing credit.

It goes back to the ECOA of 1974 passed by Congress.

A U.S. federal law that ensures that all consumers have equal access to credit, regardless of their race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, or the fact that they receive public assistance. The law aims to prevent discrimination in the lending process and promote fairness in the extension of credit.

A U.S. federal law enacted in 1970 to regulate the collection, use, and dissemination of consumer credit information. Its primary goal is to ensure the accuracy, fairness, and privacy of the information contained in consumer credit reports. The FCRA is designed to protect consumers from inaccurate, unfair, and discriminatory credit reporting practices and to promote the integrity of the credit reporting system.

As credit card terms of service continually change, it's possible. It wouldn't hurt to copy and paste your specific terms of service in to ChatGPT and ask this question.

Unfortunately, yes. In order to complete your order with piggybackerz.com (or any tradeline marketplace) you will need to provide enough personal information (including name, address, date of birth, and social security number) so that a seller can successfully add you to their tradeline as an authorized user. We presume that since you are considering using the piggybackerz.com service your creditworthiness may not be attractive to an identity thief. Additionally, we have identified and screened individuals with perfect payment history on aged tradelines who are likely to have very good credit scores of their own. While we believe the likelihood of identity theft related to you providing this information is low, it is not zero.

No. Authorized users are not responsible for charges made on the credit card, even if the primary cardholder stops paying.

If a seller stops paying their credit card on time, and as a result the card payment loses its 100% on time payment status, the buyer would be entitled to a refund for that tradeline. Unfortunately, the missed payment associated with the card would be temporarily associated with the buyer's credit profile. Sellers are incentivized to not let this happen as doing so would mean that they would not earn their fee.

Assuming the minimum payment was made, two things would happen. First, the buyer has the right to request a refund of the purchase price for the related tradeline. Second, the tradeline would report to the buyer's credit profile. Assuming the utilization rate of the tradeline that was purchased was lower than the buyer's pre-existing credit utilization rate, the buyer's new average utilization rate would likely improve, though not by as much as expected had the utilization rate remained low. If the card utilization rate was exceptionallyt high, there's a chance that the high utilization would have a negative impact on variables considered when calculating a buyer's credit score. Seller's have an incentive to keep utilization below 15%, as failing to do so would cost them their commission.

Sellers have an incetive to remove authorized users at the end of the agreed upon contract term, as failing to do so could negatively affect their ability to relist the card for future buyers. If they fail to remove the card in a timely fashion, the buyer would continue to receive the benefit (or burden) of any additional reporting cycles that occurred while the buyer was listed as an authorized user. The buyer is under no obligation to pay for any additional reporting cycles that occur as a result of a seller not removing them from their credit card in a timely fashion.

As the payment history of the specific tradeline purchased is the only one associated with the buyer's credit profile, the buyer wouldn't experience any negative outcome from a seller going delinquent on an unrelated tradeline.

There are several best practices that you should seriously consider to safeguard your credit score and identity. With respect to credit score, you want to make every effort to make minimum required payments for every credit account that you own. Practice responsible financial planning and work to avoid getting overextended on your credit accounts, as high credit utilization can quickly have negative consequences on your credit score. Lastly, each of the three primary credit bureaus offer a feature that allows you to "freeze" your credit. This effectively prevents new creditors from using information from that specific credit bureau to open a new credit account. When you decide that you want to open a new credit account, you can "thaw" your credit profile at any/all of the credit bureaus for a brief time to allow that creditor to run their credit check. By doing this, you can drastically reduce the risk of a stranger (or, sadly, often times a family member) using your personal information to open a credit account in your name.

Identity theft is a growing problem. The best way to prevent identity theft is to be aware of how it happens, and to take common sense approaches to securing your information. These approaches include: using unique passwords (or a password manager) to keep your login credentials on different sites unique, using Multifactor Authentication to login to email/financial accounts, freezing your credit profiles on each of the three primary credit reporting agencies, requiring passwords to access both your smart phones as well as individual apps within the phone that may provide access to financial apps and/or sensitive personal information.

Yes…but probably not right away. It takes a few years of continuous responsible credit card payments for a card to have "value" to a buyer. During those first few years, you will want to work on making sure that all of your payments are made on time while increasing the credit limit associated with that card. Also, many companies in the tradeline space work with a limited list of card issuers (Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, Barclay's, Capital One, Bank of America, and Discover) because of their consistency in reporting tradeline data for authorized users.

Not yet! But we will be adding one. If you are interested in receiving a communication from us when we launch our affiliate program, please put your name on our waiting list.