@jason0618 wrote:
OK, so I know there arI'm guessing FAKO is a fake score, but I don't understand how it works.
Myfico says my score is 573 as of today, but if I pull my score at equifax.com, it tells me my score is 427. That's a HUGE difference for both purporting to be equifax scores...
On top of that, credit sesame tells me my score is 591, and creditkarma says 507...
With all of this, I have no idea what my score is, and most importantly, if anything I'm doing is having a positive effect on my scores.
It is confusing but I'll try and explain.
The EQ score here is a true FICO score. At the EQ website they sell both a FICO score and their own "Equifax Credit Score" which is not an EQ FICO and is not used by any lenders. You have to be very careful what you buy directly from the EQ website. That EQ FICO score can be found here: www.equifax.com/web-myfico-products/
No one has been able to buy their own Experian FICO score since February of 2009. Creditors can pull Experian and also there is a CU (PSECU) in Pennsylvania that supplies that information to it's members only. You can only buy true FICO scores at a few places. One place is here at myFICO.
At one time you could also purchase your Transunion score at transunioncs.com but no more. Wal Mart now offers a TU08 score to those who have their store card and the Discover version.
(With all due credit to long time member llecs for this):
"Virtually everyone sells scores, but they are not all FICO scores. If you got scores from the big 3, then very likely 2 or all 3 of them are not FICO scores. Experian and TransUnion do not sell FICO scores on their website. We call these non-FICO scores, FAKOs, and can easily be as much as a few points to 100+ points off your real FICO when pulled the same day. If it didn't say "FICO" next to the score, then it isn't.
Other companies (e.g. freecreditreport.com, freescore.com, truecredit, creditkarma, Equifax Credit Complete, Quizzle, and dozens of others out there) sell scores, but they are nothing more than gimmicks and lenders don't use them. They do this because they want to avoid paying any fees to FICO and when they say "credit score" people buy it anyway on the assumption that it is a FICO. The scores are off because the formula is different, factors in different things as compared to FICO, and score ranges are different than FICO's (e.g. FICO is 300-850, Vantage is 501-990, PLUS is 330-830, TransRisk is 350-850, and so on)."
