The dysfunctional state of the US consumer credit-score model

[gdale6]

"The use of hundreds of credit score models across U.S. means your score can swing by 100 points or more.

Ever stroll into a car dealership, confident your 720 credit score would earn you a great interest rate, only to find out that the figure the dealership pulled is 50 points lower than what your "free" credit report — or the free one provided to you by your credit card company — quoted you?

You're not alone. Many consumers cautiously monitoring their credit report are getting tripped up by lenders who pull figures contrary to the score on free reports."

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/24/that-great-credit-score-you-got--its-probably-wrong.html

[elim]

Good article... I watch CNBC if i'm home during the week.  They usually do pretty good.

[SOGGIE]

Very useful info. Thanks for sharing!

[Anonymous]

There's some pretty misleading information in this article.  It really needed to be fact checked thoroughly before it went to press.  For example:

"Although FICO rolled out their latest version, FICO 8, in Spring 2014, many mortgage lenders haven't yet updated to FICO Score 8."

FICO 8 was released in 2008, not 2014.

A big problem with articles about credit scoring written by most journalists is that they know nothing about it, and therefore they have to rely on cobbling together a bunch of quotes from the "experts" they interview.  Since the journalist knew nothing going in, he has no framework for how to evaluate what he is hearing critically, or whether he has misquoted someone.  It's like someone writing an article about World War II who knows absolutely nothing about it -- so when he says that Hitler invaded Japan he has no way to realize that he has said something silly.

[ddemari]

very good article. I especially liked how they mentioned collections reporting a lot of experian. that was so true for me back in the day, EX was always the hardest on me. 

[Callandra]

FICO 8 gives you points for paying off collections? Thought they needed to be removed for that..