Credit Score among 3 bureaus is so different

[Anonymous]

Hi All.  I'm having some trouble understanding why/how credit scores can be so different between the 3 credit bureaus.

On this website, I checked Transunion..showing credit score of 726.  Equifax is showing 763. I also checked Experian and it's showing 781.  

Equifax and Experian are somewhat similar, so not too concerned about that, but Transunion is way off.  I don't see any major errors in the report so I'm wondering if anyone can explain how scores can be so different when the information contained in the reports is essentially the same.

Very confusing.  Is there anything that I should be doing to help increase the Transunion score?

Thanks,

Monica 

[haulingthescoreup]

Hi, welcome to the forums!

If you got your EQ and TU scores here (from myFICO), they're both FICO scores.

Your EX score is a FAKO, unless you got it from a mortgage lender, or you belong to a credit union in Pennsylvania called PSECU, which provides members with their EX FICO once a month.

FAKO scores don't track FICO's --sometimes they're higher, sometimes they're lower, and the FAKO's from different providers don't match each other, either. In other words, there are multiple FAKO formulas with differing score ranges and so forth.

Anyway, on your FICO EQ and TU reports, what are the positives and negatives listed on screen 2 for each, in order? The negatives are more important, because they are the codes that lenders get when they pull your credit reports.

Also, print out your reports and go through with a yellow highlighter, looking for differences in dates, balances, missing accounts, etc etc.

If you haven't already, please read Understanding Your FICO ® Score and Credit Scoring 101 (at least the first post.)

These will give you the background knowledge you need to understand what you read here on the forums.

[RobertEG]

Forgetting, for a moment, the so-called FAKO scores, even if you get a true FICO score from each CRA, each CRA contracts with FairIsaac for the production of licensed FICO scores using totally different scoring algorithms, based upon their view of the world.  CRAs dont generate FICO scores, they use algorithms licensed to them by FairIsaac. It is not uncommon to see as much as a 30 pt divergence between CRA based scores, even with identical credit files. 

But to further complicate things, the credit files of each CRA are rarely identical, since creditors dont always report the same data to each CRA.

FairIsaac markets dozens of scoring algorithms, that produce dozens of different scores.

[haulingthescoreup]

Thanks, good point! I forgot my usual speech about how all three CRA's use different algorithms, and even with identical reports, you're likely to get different scores.

But not the wide variance that OP reported. There's probably something else going on there.