Scorepower Beacon is Fake!

I believe that Equifax is duping consumers into thinking it is giving out true Beacon scores for $12.95. Not so. This is the last time I will give them my hard earned money.

On April 30th, I applied for credit. One hour later I pulled my own Beacon from Scorepower, which showed the inquiry from that day. The creditor's Beacon (yes, they still use Beacon) score was 30 points higher than mine.

Today, I pulled my Beacon score first and then - 30 minutes later - applied for credit. My Beacon was 16 points higher than the creditor's Beacon. EXACT same information. With my score, I qualified for the loan, but with the score the creditor pulled, I was turned down - even though the LO saw my printout of the MyFICO score card. I begged the LO for her copy of the report so that I could have a paper comparison of the difference in the Beacon "scores", but she wouldn't do it.

I think either Scorepower is not giving a true Beacon score to consumers, or - the worst case scenario - credit scores are so arbitrary and fickle that it should be a crime to rate anybody's credit with them as they are calculated now. If the fluctuations are truly that great, they need to greatly extend the score curve.

Very angry with the CRAs,

 

The credit applied for was "#3: bank/finance", though I don't know if that was the "model" used by the bank. The LO did not specify that their model was different than the one producing the score I got . While I see what you're getting at, I still think it is misleading for Equifax to sell this product as an accurate credit score.

If Equifax is going to sell this product, I believe that they should either have a disclaimer stating that this is a "general" Beacon and any Beacon model lenders use may be modified or they should offer scores for each possible model used.

What's the point of selling the product to consumers if the consumer can't rely on it for an accurate credit rating?