Never Assume Your Credit Activity is Reported
As the credit reporting system in both Canada and the United States is a voluntary system many people are left with the impression that most of their credit activity goes unreported. However just because the lenders are not required to report your payment history to the three national credit reporting agencies doesn’t mean that they won’t. This is why it is never a good idea to be tempted to make a payment a day or two late; the truth is you never know what is going to end up on that report. To create even more suspense it can take three months to a year for something that belongs on your report to actually be processed through the FICO system and make its presence known on your report.
If your credit is not that hot then the lack of reporting to the credit agencies might be to your benefit. However if you have excellent credit then you want the agencies to report your good payment history to the credit card bureaus. If your lenders are not reporting your excellent track record, your FICO credit scores will not be as high as they could be.
When it comes to being lax about reporting credit to the three big reporting agencies credit unions are the worst offenders. To avoid not having your good borrowing habits recorded on FICO avoid taking out loans at credit unions.
However if you must borrow from a credit union you can always request that a credit union report your good behaviors to the credit bureaus personally. They will probably be more than happy to comply, even if they comply with it a little later than most lenders would.