Ernie asked:
Hi, I am an 19 year old college student and I don’t know much about credit lol. I had a credit card for a year now and i havent missed a payment but my balance is higher than it should be considering my limit. I never went over my limit but again, my balance could be lower. Last month my experian score was 694. Enough about me…I have been a member of freecreditreport.com for just about a month now. I got an offer to get the 3 credit reports from truecredit.com for free for 30 days. I plan on canceling it soon but I have encountered an issue of sorts. I got the 3 scores and accoring to truecredit.com my Experian score is 638. Interestingly enough, I just re-ordered/refreshed my credit report at freecreditreport.com and its showing that I have a score of 704(=D). So can someone tell me why is this so? I really hope my score is 704 and not 638 but I don’t know which score/website is more accurate. Can someone please clear this up for me? Thank you for helping me with my credit ignorance!
Just in case anyone was wondering my exquifax and transunion scores were both 649 according to truecredit.com.
Peter
Hi, I am an 19 year old college student and I don’t know much about credit lol. I had a credit card for a year now and i havent missed a payment but my balance is higher than it should be considering my limit. I never went over my limit but again, my balance could be lower. Last month my experian score was 694. Enough about me…I have been a member of freecreditreport.com for just about a month now. I got an offer to get the 3 credit reports from truecredit.com for free for 30 days. I plan on canceling it soon but I have encountered an issue of sorts. I got the 3 scores and accoring to truecredit.com my Experian score is 638. Interestingly enough, I just re-ordered/refreshed my credit report at freecreditreport.com and its showing that I have a score of 704(=D). So can someone tell me why is this so? I really hope my score is 704 and not 638 but I don’t know which score/website is more accurate. Can someone please clear this up for me? Thank you for helping me with my credit ignorance!
Just in case anyone was wondering my exquifax and transunion scores were both 649 according to truecredit.com.
Peter
Marie
As with most of those “credit monitoring” services, they are always off on the score and never up to date.
They are not worth the money in my book as you get what is called “FAKO” scores.
The only place to get your true score is through myfico.com
They do charge a monthly fee, but at least you get the scores they have on file. But you must remember this, not all creditors report on a monthly basis, some only do so every 60 days.
When a creditor pulls your credit report they get what is on file as of the day of the request, so they see a different score.
IF you want to raise your score, pay down the credit card and never use more the 10% of your available credit line for the best results. On average, most people use 30% and anything higher will lower your score.
Comment by Sgt Big Red — May 5, 2010 @ 8:10 am
Sam
You’re talking about different credit scores from 3 different credit bureaus. They all have different information in your different credit reports so they will all come up with different scores in most cases. That’s why you need to check all three bureaus.
But the only thing that really matters is which credit score will the lender pull when you apply for a loan or insurance or what have you.
Comment by Adam — May 6, 2010 @ 6:37 am
Carol
Cancel both monitoring services. They are a complete waste of money.
For starters, you only have a year of credit history. You are not going to have a good score. It takes time to build good credit. The best thing you can do is pay off that credit card balance. Carrying balances of more than 30% of your limit, hurts your score. Pay off the balance and your score will rebound.
Creditors use FICO scores. Anything else is a complete waste of money. The Equifax site uses FICO. You can get FICO scores for TransUnion and Equifax at MyFico.com. Consumers can no longer get FICO scores for Experian.
Experian and TransUnion sites use Vantage scores — different formula, different scale (990 vs FICO’s 850), or each has their own Fakko scoring system. Third party monitoring services use Fakko scores.
CreditKarma.com offers a free score estimator based on your TransUnion credit report. It’s not FICO. But it’s kinda, sorta like FICO, give or take 50 points or so. Close enough if you are just curious about your score.
Remember that your score is only a very small part of credit decisions. If you pay all your bills on time and check your credit reports annually (AnnualCreditReport.com) for accuracy, your score will take care of itself.
Comment by bdancer222 — May 8, 2010 @ 5:07 pm
Robert
I used this one two week ago totally free, they will give you up to a weeks trial and you can access your report immediately it will give you a report for all the main credit report providers Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.
Comment by Sam A — May 11, 2010 @ 12:20 am