They are ratings you get much like FICO - from any of the free credit report sites. PG (privacy guard is one that many of us like) has where you can use their service free for 60 day. They make it easy to pull your reports and scores every day and have monitoring services. I'm not 100% certain in this but in looking at posts where people post both their fako and fico scores, the fico are always a bit higher. If this is true across the board, then you know that your FICO is likely a bit better. It's a great way of keeping track of your scores without paying fico.com all the time.
One way to get a FAKO free after the PG free months run out is to use Credit Keeper http://www.mycreditkeeper.com/ It will give one free month there in addition. It's EXACTLY the same as PG. Even owned by the same company, Trilegiant. The only difference is that PG charges an annual fee, and Credit Keeper changes monthly. I only like CK better because I can more easily afford the monthly fee.
PG or CK are fine for MONITORING, but that's it. Despite a number of anecdotes to the contrary, THERE IS NO CORRESPONDENCE between a FAKO score and a FICO score. If you look far and wide enough you will eventually become convinced of this. The algorithms are different and proprietary and owned by differnt companies. Fair Isaac owns the FICO algorithm and Neuristics owns trhe CreditExpert algorithm. FAKO scores are nothing but snake-oil. The only use I see for the PG fakos is that a change from one day to the next can alert you to look for a change in the details of your TLs. There of no use in gauging your progress in becoming perceived as a better credit risk.
Re: Re: PG Fako - what is it? Thank you goldhumminbird! I was already cringing at the cost of 2 subs to them!
Re: Re: Re: PG Fako - what is it? 2 subs? What's that? Yeah, I was using the PG service daily (quite addictive) and was dreading the day I'd have to pay the $119. It was due the week my daughter got married, so that wasn't great timing and I'm still rebuilding so my CL are still tiny. Goldhummingbird
Ham and cheese, turkey and swiss? LOL No, one subscription for me and one for DH. Like you, I've become completely addicted!
Basically its a credit score, which if all things were equal would allow you to be able to tell what your credit scores are. Because the FICO scores are proprietory, and each CRA's way of scoring is slightly different, the FAKO score doesn't always come out to the same number, but it should give you a ballpark figure to be able to compare your credit reports with. But at least its consistent, so if you start when you have a FAKO of 400, and you get a FAKO of 600, you have a fairly good idea that you've improved your score by roughly 50%.
50% Heck, I'd settle for 50 POINTS. LOL According to the FAKO chart my credit is POOR and only 10% of the nation has credit as POOR as mine. I was VERY POOR on one for awhile, and was happy to see I moved up a notch. I got a CA dropped and only gained one lousy point. It's very frustrating. I can only hope that on the REAL FICO it made more than a 1 point difference. My FAKO's are in the 550 range. CK is down yesterday and today. I've checked several times (being addicted and all). LOL
Re: Re: PG Fako - what is it? It's very frustrating. goldhummin ====================== Just set down relax and have a couple of meat ball subs.LOL ******************************************************[/colo
Re: Re: Re: PG Fako - what is it? Yeah, well. I'll drown my credit sorrows in a big meat ball. Hey, I guess I already do that. But at least when I'm drowning in my (PG) sub, I'm not eating. THAT must be a good thing.
Re: Re: Re: PG Fako - what is it? When TU was giving out FAKOs with the dispute results, I found it interesting to see what the dispute did to the score. I disputed one CO, they made it a PAA/$0, and I would have had a 100 point bump, but a new collection account had popped up at the same time, so it was about 25 points lower than that. The best report to see how a dispute will affect your score is TU... *hint* they so nicely order everything sorted by how much it is affecting your score. If you dispute a negative towards the top of the negatives section, chances are you'll notice a bigger bump then if you are disputing accounts that are showing up lower on the report.
Re: Re: Re: PG Fako - what is it? I found that my Fako scores are higher than the true FICO, not lower. Just goes to show that it's different for everyone and you can only use it as a guide, as some have suggested. It's also good for bumping inquiries.
Wow, I wonder why that is Hedwig? Why aren't we privileged to how the scores are calculated? They are OUR scores after all.
Re: Re: PG Fako - what is it? The "business" answer is that the scoring algorithms are proprietary, i.e., protected intellectual property. The real answer is that they want us KEPT IN THE DARK so that we can be exploited, manipulated, punished, and rewarded (read "behavior modification), at will, to maximum benefit of subscribers' and info. providers' revenues. I must say they could be doing a much better job of it. The scores are calculated fom data held by the CRAs and, in that limited sense, are not "ours". The data are provided to the CRAs by information furnishers and, in that VERY limited sense are not ours. All we have is a heavily industry influenced and rarely enforced set of credit regulations that we have to use with our collective intelligence and wits to FORCE them to present "our" data in the correct way. It's all, including FICO, a web of obfuscation meant to keep us on the defensive. All a load of crap !
Re: Re: PG Fako - what is it? It's also a nice way for the industry to make a hell of a lot of money as we become more and more addicted to increasing our credit scores.
