My Equifax FAKO on truecredit has been hovering in the 650-680 range for a year. Last night I decided to go to myfico.com and purchase my real FICO score....using the 25% off coupon provided by this website. Thanks. My FICO is 779. I was floored. Why waste money with truecredit if their information can be this far off base? If you are using truecredit.com, perhaps your information is terribly inaccurate as well. Just a thought. As a monitoring service, they may work well. On providing a reasonable and believable credit score though, they disappoint me.
WOW, based on your post I checked mine: My truecredit FAKO for Equifax is 610 and my Equifax FICO is 658. Not as dramatic a difference as yours, but still good news none the less!
Yeah mine was off something like 50 points. I just use it to check what has come on my report or off. The score part is useless.
Hmmm wonder if it like this for everyone. I have never done a real FICO but I always heard that the FAKE scores were always higher. This proves NOT to be true. I like it. : ) Woofer
I think it can be either way. I've heard of some that were higher and some that were lower. Crazy, isn't it?
I think the FICO model has "tweaked" lately, probably reflecting changes in relative scores, but I think the FAKOs are running the same old models. I've seen discrepancies like those above, and now FICOs seem to be running higher than FAKOs....
Which FAKO though? I've seen the TU scores are now pretty close to FICOs, though they have a scale thats more than 100 points higher...
Hmmm.....that is very interesting. Now that I think about it, I have not seen FICO posting overall statistics in a while.
Hey all, been away from the board for a while doing my thing but as expected, the two topics I came for answers on are currently running threads. So my question for the pros regarding the whole FICO vs. FAKO issue is this: What's to guarantee that a creditor you're applying to will look at your FICO score and not a FAKO score? I'm a manager for an Auto Group and I see the Finance Managers at my stores pull more than one bureau on each prospective buyer all day long. And it's not like they pull an Experian with a FICO then TU with a FICO. They pull each report with it's own proprietary score. If a customer told one of my guys, "I have a copy of my FICO score and it's 20 points higher than the FAKO score you pulled," we'd probably all have a laugh. I know for a fact that the bank reps on the other end of our application process are pulling the same multiple scores.
If it's an auto dealer, they're probably pulling an auto-enhanced score, which is even different. That's what makes it so hard. There isn't just one FICO model, there are many. They can orient them toward a certain business. For example, an auto-enhanced score might count auto loans and other installment loans heavier and not put as much weight on credit cards. I'm not saying that's how it is, but it's possible.
Depending upon the lenders worked with on the auto financing, they could also use their own scoring model. However, the relative default risk should be roughly the same for relative scores.
Point in case here . . . there are many models and who uses what is determined by the lender. This is what people miss when it comes to the whole FICO 08' phenomenon.
Just for comparison Since I just recently updated both reports, here's how my scores compare: TU Ex Eq TrueCredit 580 580 579 MyFICO 599 601 514 So TrueCredit underestimates my score by 20 points for TransUnion and Experian, but OVERestimates my score by a whopping 65 at Equifax. I have two active collection accounts reporting on Equifax and not on the the other two, so that may be what makes the difference.
Here's one for the conspiracy theorists. Since posting the original thread last week, Truecredit has kicked me off their service. Absolutely no reason given. It isn't like I log on often for bumpage. My inquiry count is too low to even bother. It wouldn't take much research to cross-reference who I am on Truecredit as my logon here is the same logon there. Perhaps I have a carried away imagination, but I bet dollars to donuts that we have a Truecredit troll running around these boards. I know that there are others here that have also been kicked off, but the general consensus was because of high website usage. I don't fit that pattern though. I've been using Truecredit for a year and a half and this is too much of a coincidence.
Are you sure you are really kicked off? I've been seeing this message a lot: " Privacy Protection In order to protect your privacy, we cannot display your credit report online. Explanation: Protecting the privacy of your personal information is of utmost importance to TrueCredit. Because our system could not verify your identity, we are unable to display your credit report online at this time." I must have seen this at least 10 times in the past week. Each time, I hit the back button and then repeat whatever I was trying to do, and it works fine. I've seen messages about this on other boards, so I'm not the only one seeing these.
That isn't what I'm seeing. Good thought though. I've been locked out and told to contact customer service for more information. It has nothing to do with a missed payment as it's automated and my payments are current. There isn't a valid reason for locking me out....other than my posting and they got their feelings hurt. I'm going to call them for an explanation.