How do I refresh my credit score on FICO score watch

[Carebear2014]

I just ordered the product on Feb 4, and score watch is still showing my Feb 4 score. I now have an option to refresh but I have to pay. I'm already paying for the program. Why do I have to pay to refresh it? Is this a glitch? Paying to refresh costs more than the program even with the 30% off offer. I thought the system automatically updates daily? I have the alerts set to my current credit score.

[Gunnar419]

ScoreWatch doesn't update daily. It updates your score (but not your CR) where there is something to report.

Besides that, it has to be set correctly to report certain types of changes. For example, if you want it to report ALL score changes, you need to go into your settings and set your target score to exactly what your present score is. Then, if your score changes, you need to go in and set your target score to THAT score.

That's very bad product design, but that's how SW works. Check all your settings to make sure SW is set up to report the big changes. Even then, there are some CR changes that SW won't report, but you'll at least get the big ones.

[bobebob]

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@Carebear2014 wrote:
I just ordered the product on Feb 4, and score watch is still showing my Feb 4 score. I now have an option to refresh but I have to pay. I'm already paying for the program. Why do I have to pay to refresh it? Is this a glitch? Paying to refresh costs more than the program even with the 30% off offer. I thought the system automatically updates daily? I have the alerts set to my current credit score.

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Let me help push you through a couple of stages of frustration:

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/myFICO-Product-Feedback/Positive-score-changes-not-updated-by-SW/m-p...

I get a little ranty, but trust me it'll be cathartic. 

[Carebear2014]

Thank you both for the responses. Bobebob, thank you. I appreciate the "rant".

I think this product sucks. If I'm monitoring my score I should be able to know what it is at all times. Having to pay to refresh the score or wait until a potentially negative item is reported for the score change to be reported is rideculous. I'm still looking at score reports from Febraury 3. Just stupid. I've gotten a new credit card, paid off a collection bill, and paid down the balance on one of my cards. There's definitely been a change.

[Carebear2014]

FICO should remove that option to refresh the score by paying money. We're already paying for the service. The option to update should be included as part of the service. Even with the 30% off discount, the option to refresh costs almost as much as the service.

[Revelate]

I think there's some confusion here: you do get positive and negative score changes, simply SW does not track every single change to one's credit report and at times it'll get rolled into a balance update or whatever.  In practice it doesn't matter much assuming you have sufficient tradelines and activity to trigger the updates in my experience.

As for the refresh of the report: it costs extra to pull a report from a CRA - pulling one as a consumer after our annualfreecreditreports are used is on the order of $10 sans score.  Want report + score, or score + report, spend more money.  A reasonable enhancement would be for Equifax to offer an option for a discounted report pull inside the Scorewatch product itself (myFICO and a few others resell their product is my understanding), but they haven't provided that for whatever reason.  Unfortunately the CRA's view these products as a profit center rather than a consumer advocacy one or whatever.

Maybe that'll change sometime in the future in terms of pricing but for what it does SW does Ok; that said personally I think there's more cost-effective options but I'm in the camp of not really caring what my interstitial FICO score is other than when I'm in the runup to an application.  The monthly updates that I can get for "free" from one of my credit unions and one of my credit cards, and the credit monitoring from CS and CK is sufficient for my purposes.  Of course, EQ is the only one which doesn't have a freebie report data access, and that's who produces Scorewatch, so... oh well, that's business.

[notfancy]

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@Carebear2014 wrote:
Thank you both for the responses. Bobebob, thank you. I appreciate the "rant".

I think this product sucks. If I'm monitoring my score I should be able to know what it is at all times. Having to pay to refresh the score or wait until a potentially negative item is reported for the score change to be reported is rideculous. I'm still looking at score reports from Febraury 3. Just stupid. I've gotten a new credit card, paid off a collection bill, and paid down the balance on one of my cards. There's definitely been a change.

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I also wish you could get a bit more out of it for what you pay. That being said they'll also let you know if there is no change. This is an email I got from them  a couple of times:

Hi Fancy,

For the past week Score Watch has been monitoring your FICO® Score and credit report for important changes.

According to your alert settings, no changes were found. Remember, you can log in anytime to personalize your settings.

Tip: Whether an increase/decrease in an account’s balance will cause a Credit Alert to be sent depends on when during the month the lender reported that account’s balance, and when during the month the balance was paid.

Thank you,

myFICO Customer Care

[notfancy]

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@notfancy wrote:

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@Carebear2014 wrote:
Thank you both for the responses. Bobebob, thank you. I appreciate the "rant".

I think this product sucks. If I'm monitoring my score I should be able to know what it is at all times. Having to pay to refresh the score or wait until a potentially negative item is reported for the score change to be reported is rideculous. I'm still looking at score reports from Febraury 3. Just stupid. I've gotten a new credit card, paid off a collection bill, and paid down the balance on one of my cards. There's definitely been a change.

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I also wish you could get a bit more out of it for what you pay. That being said they'll also let you know if there is no change. This is an email I got from them  a couple of times:

Hi Fancy,

For the past week Score Watch has been monitoring your FICO® Score and credit report for important changes.

According to your alert settings, no changes were found. Remember, you can log in anytime to personalize your settings.

Tip: Whether an increase/decrease in an account’s balance will cause a Credit Alert to be sent depends on when during the month the lender reported that account’s balance, and when during the month the balance was paid.

Thank you,

myFICO Customer Care

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Oops forgot to add:

The new card, collection pay off, and balance pay down might not have even been reported yet... sometimes those things all take 30 or more days to hit your credit reports.