Andy77 wrote:
My Credit Expert Score (Experian Fako) is 642
Equifax 552 (through myfico)
Transunion 540 (through myfico)
How can the credit expert score be so much higher?
Is this not a valid score and that is why it is so much higher then the other two?
Thanks
The Experian score that you received (also called a PLUS score, I believe) is valid in the sense that it is a calculation of your overall creditworthiness based on the content of the credit information held at Experian.
In practice, however, the FICO score (which is not readily available to consumers) is much more widely used as a tool to evaluate a person's credit risk.
The PLUS model uses similar criteria in its calculation of your credit score, but it is different from the FICO formula and thus it is possible that your PLUS score may not correlate well with your FICO score.
FICO scores - or rather, credit scores in general - can vary widely among the credit bureaus, for a couple reasons. First, the formulas used by each bureau differ slightly, even for the FICO scores. That is, the FICO formula used by EQ is slightly different from that used by TU and EX. Second, the information contained at each credit bureau may be different. Some accounts may appear on one report and not another. There may be 5 inquiries on TU and none on EQ. There may be derogatory information or errors on one report and not another.
So you can't really compare your EX PLUS score to your TU or EQ FICOs. It's not that the EX PLUS is necessarily an invalid score, it just that you're comparing apples to oranges when you try to draw a relationship between FICO and non-FICO scores. When comparing FICO to FICO, it's more like comparing Braeburns to Fujis.
It would be worth your while to look at each report (not just the score) to see what differences may be present among them.
