Imagine this hypothetical situation. You walk into a retail outlet and load up your cart with hundreds of dollars of sporting equipment. Clubs, shoes, balls, bats, tees and glasses are all on your shopping list. You stroll up to the register and the cashier asks you if you'd like to save 10% on your purchases. Your bill is almost $700 and saving $70 sounds like a no-brainer. The downside is you have to apply for a store credit card.

This should be a slam dunk thanks to your truly elite credit. In fact, you know for certain that your FICO scores are all above 800. All the retailer needs to do is see that 816 and you're certain that confetti and balloons will soon fall from the sky, as she takes 10% off your bill, of course. However, to your shock and dismay, the polite young lady behind the counter informs you that you've been denied because of your credit.

Here's where the fun really begins. Thanks to the FACS Act and FinReg, you will eventually be entitled to see the score that the lender used to deny you. I mean, adverse action is adverse action, right? You were denied because of your score, which was apparently way too high for the lender. The letter comes a few days later and confirms what you already knew. Your 816 was the culprit.

Why exactly were you denied? You haven't missed a payment in, well, never. Your debt is practically non-existent. You've done all of the things we've taught you and have earned great scores. Well, what not too many folks know is that scores are a great indicator of profitability as well as payment risk. Stratospheric scores, while they look great on a credit report, don't mean you'll be a profitable customer. In fact, the exact opposite is true in many cases. The lender could actually lose money on you because you tend to pay in full each month and rarely use your credit cards.

A lawsuit was filed recently by a retailer against their finance partner because the partner maintained that they needed to deny applicants with FICO scores above 800. You can read more about it here. The financier claims that anyone with scores above 800 doesn't make them enough money. The retailer claims it will cost them 25% of their customers, which means they'll lose out on the margin generated from in-store sales.

Neither party is in the wrong here. The lender is in business to make money and the retailer needs to sell stuff in order to survive. And the lender is absolutely right about the lack of revenue generated from the super-elite FICO holder. It does seem a bit odd thought that someone with FICO 500 and someone with FICO 800 would both walk out of the store empty-handed, assuming they were both depending on the in-store financing to make their purchases. If I've said it once I've said it a million times: the world of credit is not without humor.

John Ulzheimer – Credit scoring and credit reporting expert and author, John is the President of Consumer Education for Credit.com. Formerly with Equifax and Fair Isaac, John shares his unique insight of the inner workings of credit scoring models and the credit reporting industry on CreditBloggers.com.