@Anonymous wrote:
As you all can see I am new here and have just begun my credit repair journey I'm hoping that some one can shed some light on credit score questions and educate me in the differences.
I have recently started using credit karma and they tell me the my credit score is 603 on trans union and 605 on equifax so not a huge difference however I was told by a lender that my score was 521. Can anyone educate me where the difference comes from.
Also I was looking at paying for one of the monthly subscriptions here on my fico for monitoring purposes as I have written a lot of GW letters and was just sucess ful at disputing a collection account that was not mine
What do you guys use and what are the pros and cons thanks
As tufa pointed out, credit karma scores are "FAKO" scores and are not usually going to match your "real" FICO scores. They may be higher or lower, or close. They are an attempt to duplicate the FICO math algorithm, which is complex and secret. As such they are essentially worthless. Credit Karma does however serve a purpose for moitoring whats on your reports.
It must also be noted that there are also different versions of the FICO scores, intended for different purposes. There is the FICO 8 Standard score is the one you will see most commmonly given out by credit card companies, banks, and credit unions when you have a credit card with them. Barclays, Discover, and Walmart are some that give you a FICO score for free, usually updated once a month. There is also the Bank enhanced and Auto enhanced FICO 8 scores. Then there are the previous FICO versions - usually referred to as "FICO 4" (they are actually FICO Score 4 TU, Beacon 5 EQ, and FICO Score 2 EX, but they are collectively referred to as FICO 4). These score versions are almost universally used for mortgages. This site here is the only place you can get your FICO mortgage, bank, and auto scores in addition to your FICO 8 scores. The 3 bureau monitoring service is $24.95 a month, and you get your reports and scores (various versions), and monitoring of your scores as they change. Experian also has a pretty good score monitoring service with their Credit Check Total service. It gives you daily report pulls and score (EX only) and three times monthly pulls and scores for TU and EQ. They normally charge $29.95 for this service, but if you do their 7 day trial, when you call to cancel it tell them its too expensive they they will cut the price in half, to $14.95 a month. At that price its a great deal even without the alternate scores (you only get FICO 8 scores).
I'm not familiar with what Equifax offers in their monitoring service.
Whatever paid service you settle on, just make sure it gives your "real" FICO scores. If it does not say "FICO" anywhere then its almost certainly a FAKO score and not worth paying for.
FWIW many of us here will use the 3 bureau monitoring from here (or Experian) for scores and use the various free sites - Credit Karma, Credit Sesame, Credit.com, Quizzle, etc for monitoring/checking their report contents.
