@Anonymous wrote:How do you know that Credit Karma didn't have a deal with the two credit bureaus; do you think Credit Karma receives credit report from the two bureaus for free? Search the web on how Credit Karma users have been shocked to find their credit score from Credit Karma had drastically dropped and how they panicked and purchased the real score only to find out there was no relation between credit karma score and the three credit bureaus score.
Credit Karma pays credit bureaus for the info, and they pay for that (plus get profit for themselves) with advertising credit cards and other credit services. They make money off those because when someone clicks a link, the advertiser knows that the person was using a link from Credit Karma, so the advertiser pays credit karma for that service.
What you've said is that someone might panic after seeing a drop in their CK score, and that might cause them to go buy a real FICO score from some other website not affiliated with CK. And that the credit bureaus should pay CK for this, because a new customer might have come from CK.
Your reasoning would be sound if credit bureaus had their own advertising links on CK, for people to go and buy their scores. Put yourself in their shoes - if you ran a business, would you pay for a service on the off chance that they might inadvertently refer some new customers to your business, without having any proof that they helped you at all?
If you want to go all conspiracy theory, why not consider the fact that maybe CK shows huge score drops so that people will click their advertising links for things like credit repair services?
Or, more likely, CK's algorithm is not wrong on purpose, since they can make money off anyone, good score or not. Good score? They'll suggest you click their links for prime credit cards, and loan refinance/applications. Bad score? They'll suggest you use their credit repair services, or use their links to sub-prime credit cards.
