Why is Myfico so slow to alert??

[Anonymous]

According to my CCT account, my AmEx card reported to Experian as a new account on 6/2 and raised my score 8 points. I still, as of today 6/7, have not received any alerts from Myfico about a new account reporting or score change. I'm thankful that I have both accounts for the time being because if this was a fraudulent account, someone could max it out before I knew it was on there.

Anyone else seeing this??

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

According to my CCT account, my AmEx card reported to Experian as a new account on 6/2 and raised my score 8 points. I still, as of today 6/7, have not received any alerts from Myfico about a new account reporting or score change. I'm thankful that I have both accounts for the time being because if this was a fraudulent account, someone could max it out before I knew it was on there.

Anyone else seeing this??

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When you say that your Amex reported to Experian on June 2, that could mean:

      (a)  You checked CCT on June 2 and saw the new Amex account on your EX report

      (b)  You checked CCT in the last couple days, saw the Amex account, and saw that it has a "Date Reported" of June 2

Which of those is the case?

The Date Reported field indicates the date that Amex sent the record to the CRA (in this case Experian).  It then often takes 3, 4, or even 5-6 business days for the CRA to update its database.  It then can take a credit monitoring service a few more days after that to send you an alert.

I am pretty sure that with CCT you are getting daily updates of your EX report (as opposed to EQ and TU).  So if you signed in to CCT yesterday (say) you might easily have seen the Amex account (you get a new EX report every day) and it would have indicated that Amex reported the account on June 2.  But perhaps Experian didn't update its database until June 5.  Today is the 7th so you might not get a myFICO alert till tomorrow (2-3 business days later).

I am curious... when did you actually open this new Amex card?

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the reply. To clarify, I got an alert from CCT on 6/2 that a new account had appeared and then on 6/5 the score change alert from them. The actual account was opened 4/8 and as most have referenced in the past, hit my report after the second statement cut.

When I log into Myfico, it shows no changes to my Ex account since 5/31. Just seems to me that if CCT knew on 6/2, wouldn't Myfico know on that same day?  And if not, if the alerts take a week to get, is there really a point to paying for the srvice?

As far as the date AmEx actually reported to the CC on my report, I didn't bother to look. I knew from reading here not to expect it til after the 2nd statement so I wasn't really expecting it til now.

[Anonymous]

I see.  So you got an alert from CCT on June 2 and have not gotten an alert yet from MF.

Well, I certainly agree that all people should closely watch the stuff they spend money on and periodically assess whether they can drop certain things and spend less.  I think that is always a good idea, whether we are talking about cable TV, going out to restaurants, whatever.

It sounds like you are paying for both CCT and MF.  That sounds like that would be $15 + $30 = $45 per month (or possibly more).  Many of us spend zero dollars a month on credit monitoring services, and still get frequent reports, monthly FICO scores, etc.  So it is certainly possible to spend far less money than you are doing now -- as you say it depends on what you want.

[Anonymous]

I agree with CGID above.  Different people can justify (and afford) spending different amounts on monthly credit monitoring.  There are a number of services out there that are free; I know CGID is a fan of these, as am I. 

I spend between $1 and $2 per month on credit monitoring.  The only difference for me is whether I do 1 or 2 CCT $1 trials in the month.  I would be the life of my 5 year old son that I'll never spend more than $2/mo on credit monitoring.  But that's me and I can certainly understand those that feel it's worthwhile to spend more.

[Anonymous]

If your MyFico subscription is new, it will definitely take longer for them to do any alerts at all.  This post has details: http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/myFICO-Product-Feedback/FICO-3-Bureau-Credit-Monitoring-Frequently-a...

I actually find that WalletHub, a FAKO site with poor data to begin with, has the fastest alerts on new accounts.  It's free and I even get inquiry alerts literally instantly.  CCT is the next quickest, but MyFico is the absolute slowest.  I believe I'll be cancelling MyFico this month since the price just isn't worth the slow alerts.  I like it for the many different flavors of FICO scoring, but none of those are useful to me as I'm not seeking any particular specialty credit (auto, home, etc).

[Anonymous]

Thank you all for the replys. The two monitoring companies is a temp. thing. I signed up for CCT to compare to Myfico to see which was better. I now have my answer and will be cancelling Myfico at the end of the month. My 3 bureau will be available on 6/29 and since it's the first completely clean one, I'm waiting for that.

ABCD - the account isn't new. I've actually had it for over a year now and seems to be getting much slower than they were previously. I also agree with you about Wallethub re: alerts. It seems great for that but not much use to me otherwise. But I check it once in a while when I remember.

I also get credit scores from several credit cards but none provide utilization or specifics on each CC so I will keep CCT for report reviews and score alerts from EX since most credit card companies seem to pull that report.

[Anonymous]

Yep I called in to "cancel" my CCT to get the 50% off offer for a year and am cancelling MyFico alerts this month.  The price difference is significant and right now I'm mostly gardening and waiting for a few baddies to drop but don't necessarily need MyFico at $40 a month (monthly 3B pulls) to monitor that.

[medicgrrl]

I'm having the same problem with very slow alerts. I'll probably cancel next week after my next 3B report.

[Anonymous]

Ironically, I still haven't gotten an alert for the new account but DID get an alert this morning for a new inquiry on EX