Why credit bureaus won’t sell ‘FICO’ scores?
by admin ~ November 27th, 2008 . Filed under: Credit .
thoughtbutlost asked:
Credit bureaus talk about the importance of our credit scores. They also send me E-mail newsletters, too. I believe that all credit bureaus are talking about FICO scores. So when I acquired free annual reports, I also purchased scores. Yet, except Equifax, they only sell me ‘Vantage scores’. If FICO scores are used for our loan consideration, why cannot I get FICO scores rather than ‘Vantage scores? Or do I have to buy scores from FICO directly? Why would I want vantage score?
Herbert Coolbaugh
Credit bureaus talk about the importance of our credit scores. They also send me E-mail newsletters, too. I believe that all credit bureaus are talking about FICO scores. So when I acquired free annual reports, I also purchased scores. Yet, except Equifax, they only sell me ‘Vantage scores’. If FICO scores are used for our loan consideration, why cannot I get FICO scores rather than ‘Vantage scores? Or do I have to buy scores from FICO directly? Why would I want vantage score?
Herbert Coolbaugh
November 28th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Fair Isaac is a proprietary company they don’t want to pay.
November 30th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Fair & Isaac Company is a statistics compiler that compares your debt, payments, credit limits, must pay bills, income, seniority, etc., and using a logarithm, determines a score at that moment in time.
FICO is used by credit issuers, but is not one of the credit companies.
there can be changes in the FICO score from one week to the next.
On the old Washington Mutual site, if you carried their credit card, you could access your Fico score at will, plus the graph that indicated if the score was rising or decreasing, and the overall time sequence and trend.
December 2nd, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Simple answer: . It’s $15.95/per score from each of the 3 bureaus. Those scores are assured to be FICO scores that are what lenders use when making decisions for loans. myFICO is sponsored by Fair Isaac, the company that developed the FICO scoring algorithm.
There are Vantage scores and Beacon (FAKOs) scores issued by a couple of the bureaus, but those have no relevance on lending decisions. Those scores can even be off quite substantially from your true FICO scores.
December 4th, 2008 at 7:58 am
Since credit reports are now free from all credit reporting agency’s. They should include in your credit report your FI CO score. I don’t think you should have to buy your FICO score. Unless they are now charging for it since the credit reports are free. They do make money some how giving out free credit reports.
If it was me I would go to a bank and ask for a loan. The credit report the banks and credit card companies get. Have more information in the reports then we get when we obtain a free credit report.
December 5th, 2008 at 1:16 am
Fair Isaacs was an originator of some credit scoring systems, and so “FICO score” has become a generic term for a credit score, no matter who’s formula is being used. This is no different than somebody referring to any ****** tissue as “Klennex”. Experian can say “FICO” because they have licensed the trademark. A lender may talk about a fico score in a casual conversation when he’s really going to use a Vantage score.
Even with FICO, there are many scores. A system that predicts a good credit card customer doesn’t necessarily predict a good mortgage customer or a good auto loan customer, so the bureaus have developed a variety of scoring systems for different lenders.
December 8th, 2008 at 2:40 am
Vantage scores are the newest to be “Pushed” to the public. It is all about making money from the reporting agencies. Vantage scores are NOT used by any lender at the loan making decision. All 3 reporting agencies worked together on this but so far only Experian is selling the junk to the public. In order to get a real credit score, one that banks and lenders use, have a mortgage broker “Pull” your credit. Remember that this is a hard inquiry and could lower your score if you have more than 4 inquiries in the past 12 months (as a rule of thumb.)