Trans Union FICO

[Anonymous]

A few weeks ago I checked my Trans Union fico score and it was 642. This included my 3 active credit card accounts: 2 from BOA and 1 from Wells Fargo. My 2 BOA CC balances were at $42 and $0 respectively. My Wells Fargo CC was nearly maxed out which was the biggest reason why my TU fico score was relatively low.  Since then I’ve paid another $1500 to the Wells Fargo card to get myself very low in overall credit card utilization. Wells Fargo is due to report any day now so I was anticipating a much higher score after the next time Wells Fargo reported the card’s lower balance to the credit bureaus.

Well tonight I checked again because I wanted to see if my report updated - and my score is now 678. So yes the score is now higher. The weird thing though is this time my Wells Fargo CC account is not even listed amongst any of my accounts – including the closed ones! I confirmed this because my Trans Union fico score pages only referenced my BOA cards and obviously stated my credit utilization was very low which made my score pretty decent. Did my 2 year Wells Fargo CC account simply get deleted from my Trans Union report or did fico just miss the account just this one time in its algorithm formula? I guess I’ll now have to check my TU credit report to confirm that.  My past experience has been fico always pulls the latest info direct from the applicable credit reporting agency… which implies that the error will be with my Trans Union report - and not the fico scoring system missing my account in its algorithm at the moment I checked my score.

The bottom line and the catch is despite my Wells Fargo card temporarily having the higher balance (until the new balance gets reported) I have a solid 2+ year history with this card and have never missed a payment. Once the card and updated CC balance gets reported again to Trans Union I anticipate a score higher than the current 678 score. Probably closer to 700 based on the strength of the re-added Wells Fargo CC account with solid 2+ year payment history on it.  Has anyone else seen occasional CRA or fico score weirdness like this with good standing current accounts? This is the first time it’s happened to me.

[Anonymous]

"Trans Union fico score" What web site are you getting your FICO score from? TransUnionCS.com is the only TransUnion FICO score that I know of.

If you got your credit score form TransUnion.com or TrueCredit.com than it is not a FICO score. We often refer to them as FAKO scores. All other credit sites that sell or give scores besides the 4 listed below are also not FICO scores too.

This link will help out some.
http://ficoforums.myfico.com/fico/board/message?board.id=ficoscoring&thread.id=2654

The best places to get FICO scores are Equifax.com and MyFICO.com. TransUnionCS.com and WaMu.com are the only other exceptions that offers FICO scores to the public that I know of.

And the different scoring formulas all work differently. What affects a FICO score might do something completely different for a FAKO score. Totally different.

Hope this helps.

Message Edited by ilovepizza on 07-30-2008 11:45 PM

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the answer ilovepizza. I forgot to mention in my first post that the 642 and 678 Trans Union fico scores were pulled both times directly from myfico.com - that's the only site I use for fico scores. And for checking my 3 credit reports I use the Equifax 3 in 1 credit report.

**Update**: I think I found out the cause of the issue. I was aware Wells Fargo Financial had recently updated their computer and credit card account system so this made online site access down for a few days. This also affected online CLI and other Wells Fargo online card stuff. I found out later this might have temporarily affected their CC account reporting to the 3 credit bureaus or caused them to temporarily not report at all. So I'll check my TU fico score in a few weeks and update my post if my score changed and how much due to them re-adding back the card account...but this time with low utilization.