stuck in a rut

[Anonymous]

I first found this website after I pulled my experian credit report. My credit is trashed but I have been paying as much as I can off. Last year my score was 548, yesterday I checked its still at 548. I have steadily been paying off the collection accounts I have. I just don't get what I'm doing or have done wrong during this rebuilding process. I have no credit cards but two student loans that have been current for a year. any suggestions?

[MamboItaliano]

A year of the same score is almost impossible because you have AAOA increasing and balances decreasing. 

I am assuming you are on Experian.com. Did ANYTHING change (new accounts, new collections, higher AAOA, etc) when you hit "refresh report?" 

[Anonymous]

Yes, it was the main experian website. it said no negative info has been added for a year. one collection account was deleted and another marked as paid.

[pizzadude]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Yes, it was the main experian website. it said no negative info has been added for a year. one collection account was deleted and another marked as paid.

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The scores you get from experian are not FICO scores, so I wouldn't bother with them.   In order to know where you really stand I would recommend pulling a FICO score.

[Anonymous]

I am really confused. where is the best place to get a real FICO score

[pizzadude]

Equifax will sell you a FICO score directly:   http://www.equifax.com/credit-score/

Transunion and Experian no longer sell FICO scores directly to consumers.

MyFICO offers Equifax and Transunion FICO scores.    http://www.myfico.com/Products/Products.aspx

[Anonymous]

ok, so the experian score I got was not a fico was it just the representation of an actual score? I used free score.com last year for the score and that was fake too? I'm so new to this credit thing.

[pizzadude]

Yes, many of the credit scores out there are not FICO scores, but what we call FAKO scores.   They are sold by the CRAs because they make more money off them than FICO scores, but unfortunately they aren't the scores that lenders use ( with a few exceptions ).    There is no correlation between FICO and FAKO scores.

I'd recommend that you take a few minutes to read some of these ~ specifically the Credit Scoring 101 thread, it should help explain:

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/Frequently-Requested-Threads/td-p/19320