FICO vs. FAKO – Share your FAKO stories

[Anonymous]

Hi I am very new here. So I am confused about FICO vs. FAKO.

Credit Karma: TU 611; EQ 612

Experian.com: EX 633

Equifax.com: EQ 499; EX 482; TU 499

MyFICO: FICO 8 EX 633; TU 614; EQ 617

I have MyFICO 3B package so I see all kinds of scores. The ranges are: TU 566-641; EX 512-633; EQ 563-639

I do not understand why the Equifax.com scores are so low. My credit is bad but not that bad.

The last time I saw a real score was Sept. 2016 when I got a new car and my score was in the 560s. I don't remember which bureau. My CK scores at the time were slightly lower than what the car dealer pulled.

I know my scores have gone up since then with all on time payments and lowering balances on cards.

[Gonzozap]

Be aware that auto lenders also pull a completely different score.  Same for mortgage lenders.  The auto and mortgage scores will give you a better score if there are auto loans or mortgages on your credit report - in good standing of copurse.  So, if a person's score is overall kinda low, if they had previous auto loans in the past that show on-time payments, then the auto loan score will be higher - and vice versa of course.

I'm pretty sure that you can pay a little extra on myFico to get these a la carte scores.

[Gonzozap]

I agree.  Regardless what I did, I could not get my scores out of the high 500's.  I finally got my FICOs and what a drastic difference - 50 points higher.

I too wonder if CK keeps the lower scores even lower so that people will take advantage of those high interest cards and loans on  the site for which I'm sure they get a kickback.

[Anonymous]

I was talking to my dad the other day about credit scores as I am in the process of trying to repair mine from mistakes that I have made.

He informed me that according to Credit Karma his scores were in the mid 500s. I could not believe this when he told me. My parents have had $250k in available credit for 20 years with low balances, installment loans for 20 years, and mortgages for as long as I can remember. I asked him what could be negating his account so much and he informed me that he had 1 collection that was wrongfully reporting to his account.

Still curious, I talked him into registering on myFICO and purchasing the credit monitoring software that they sell. Once he logged in, his scored popped up and they were mid 700s across the board. I have no idea why his scores were so low on Credit Karma, but that goes to show how truely innacurate they can be. He was happy to know that he had good scores.

My only wish is that I could log into myFICO and have mid 700 scores show up. Just gotta keep running this marathon!

[Anonymous]

It will happen sooner than you think jlh1580

When I posted on Feb 19, my scores were MyFICO: FICO 8 EX 633; TU 614; EQ 617

Now as of today they are FICO 8 EX 650; TU 625; EQ 642

As long as I keep paying down and on time, they might get to high 600s in a few months, maybe in the 700s next year. Maybe even faster. I am sending out some goodwill letters to try and get some lates removed and a chargeoff removed that I paid in full.

I would like to be "gardening" and have no new inquiries but I had to get a new car and I am in law school so I get a hard inquiry every semester for student loans.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

It will happen sooner than you think jlh1580

When I posted on Feb 19, my scores were MyFICO: FICO 8 EX 633; TU 614; EQ 617

Now as of today they are FICO 8 EX 650; TU 625; EQ 642

As long as I keep paying down and on time, they might get to high 600s in a few months, maybe in the 700s next year. Maybe even faster. I am sending out some goodwill letters to try and get some lates removed and a chargeoff removed that I paid in full.

I would like to be "gardening" and have no new inquiries but I had to get a new car and I am in law school so I get a hard inquiry every semester for student loans.

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I can only hope so. I am working hard on it. Capital One is reporting many lates on my account and a woman called me this morning from their executive office to talk about it so I am hoping for a deletion of my lates from them. That's my good news of the day, so far.

[Anonymous]

Interestingly enough, and I think this goes with the previous post, I recently found out that my "FAKO" score on CK for EQ was LOWER than my real FICO EQ score!

Here's how it happened. I went to PenFed last month to apply for a used-car loan. I assumed from CK that my TU and EQ scores were both in the 660-670 range. When I sat down with the loan officer, she approved my loan right away and when she gave me the paperwork, I was astounded to find out that my FICO EQ score was 690, at least 20 points higher than I had assumed it would be from CK! It makes me wonder what my actual TU and EX scores are (CK says my TU score is now 676 and USAA says my current EX score is 660).

UPDATE 3/21: Having applied for and been approved for Discover It, I just checked CK and I see that my FAKO EQ score has dropped from 691 to 688.

[Anonymous]

Contrariwise to my previous report, here's a quick note about how the FAKO (in this case Vantage) score can be deceptively higher than your actual FICO.

In this case, it's TU. Most places - CK, Cap One, Nerdwallet, etc. - have given my current TU score as 676. Synchrony HP's and SP's TU, from what I can tell. Last week I tried applying for a CLI on my Amazon store card and got turned down flat as a pancake; fortunately it was a SP. I'm still waiting for the denial letter, but when I looked at my FICO TU score on Synchrony the other evening, I discovered that that score is...630. This is a whopping 46 points lower than any other site reports, and goes quite a ways to explain why I didn't get the CLI.

[Anonymous]

My EQ and TU FAKO scores are 628 and 630 when my actual FICO 8 scores are hovering around 711 right now. That's just over 80 points higher then my FAKO scores!

[Anonymous]

I just got that denial letter on my CLI attempt from Synchrony and my actual, current TU FICO score as of 3/24 is 627. Those dolts can't even be bothered to keep the score current on their own website...