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I am a bit confused about the big difference between FICO and FAKO scores. For instance, today I responded to a pre-approval mailing from my credit union. They pulled my EQ score. The loan officer informed me the EQ score they pulled was 779. I was approved for $15k at their lowest APR available, 7%. Curious about the amount of inquiries on my EQ, I signed up for Quizzle. According to Quizzle, my EQ is 690. That's a huge difference.
On the other hand, according to Freecreditscore.com, my EX is 729. I recently applied for the US Bank Cash+, and was approved for only $1k Cash Rewards at a terrible north-of-20% APR. They pulled EX, and in the letter they sent me I was sub-700. That's a big difference as well.
Does everyone else find a big discrepancy between their FICO and FAKO scores?
Yes. My TU score (Discover) is 684. Capital One and CK FAKO is just 617.
My Credit Karma score is steady 743 (TU based supposedly). My Barclay TU is 821, steady for the last 3 months. 78 point difference. TU is typically my lowest score. Credit Karma's scoring model has always been very low for me, for the last 4 years. For whatever reason they don't score" me right at all. I think it has to do with my small total number of accounts with a high AAoA, higher limits and low utilization. They give me a "C" for number of accounts and sometimes a "D" for utilization when I report <1% util. They are good for checking what is reported in your report, but pretty useless for score or advice.
Credit.com and Credit sesame seem to have problems getting my reports since I froze and opted out. They were always within 20 points of being right when they worked.
The difference can be big or the difference can be small. There isn't just a fixed offset between two models. The models differ so they will produce different results.
Do not rely on any model to determine a score produced by another model whether you're comparing FAKO to FICO or even one FICO model to another FICO model. The CRA used for the score and changes to the data over time can also produce differences in scoring. As with any other comparison, make sure you you understand what you're comparing so you're not trying to compare apples to oranges.
Since you can't directly get some of the scores used by creditors focusing the numbers is kinda pointless IMO. Focus on what's in your reports. Scores are based on report data. A good report will yield good scores.
This is a very common topic so you might want to refer to prior discussions as well.
I've been using Cap1's Credit Tracker to follow my score for some time, but this is a FAKO score from Trans Union. The last time I checked it, it was ~730. It seems like a good tool to use to tell if my score is generally going up or going down, but it's not really an accurate number.
It's a big difference, about 50 points, from my FICO score - FICO puts my TU Socre at 680. Still pretty good, but not over 700 as Cap1 led me to believe.
It pays to pay and get the right info, that's for sure.
@Anonymous wrote:I've been using Cap1's Credit Tracker to follow my score for some time, but this is a FAKO score from Trans Union. The last time I checked it, it was ~730. It seems like a good tool to use to tell if my score is generally going up or going down, but it's not really an accurate number.
It's a big difference, about 50 points, from my FICO score - FICO puts my TU Socre at 680. Still pretty good, but not over 700 as Cap1 led me to believe.
It pays to pay and get the right info, that's for sure.
Well, as takeshi says, you can't always get the right info! There is a relatively small set of scores available, here you can get the basic 08 scores, and you can get 04 scores for one or two CRAs elsewhere. But your issuer may be pulling a bankcard enhanced version which will be different, an auto dealer will pull a different version etc. So unless you know (and can get) the model used by the issuer, all these scores are FAKOs to some extent.
So the advice to focus on the report is right. We see a lot of posts "My score decreased/increased by 4/7/12 points etc". The issuers may never see these scores!
I agree that tracking credit report data and changes is the most important aspect of credit monitoring, but I do also think that FICO scores of any model will get you in a closer ballpark than any FAKO. I have been regularly tracking FICO scores for over 3 years now, and in that time I have yet to apply for any kind of new tradeline or limit increase for which I have not been approved. Although some of these creditors used the same models that I was tracking, some used bankcard enhanced, auto enhanced, or an alternate release year for their FICOs and the score was different. It was still in a general range that I expected though. I doubt that the same would be true if I was using FAKO scores.... they are too far off and all over the place. There is no way to get any kind of consistency with a model that uses significantly different scoring criteria.
The only FAKO I've ever looked at is the Capital One credit tracker, and it's moderately close to my TU from Discover (706 vs 725).
My last report from EX 6 weeks ago showed my score as 804, Credit Karma shows my score as 755