No credit card required
Browse credit cards from a variety of issuers to see if there's a better card for you.
So I ordered my free annual Experian report and purchased the Vantage Score for $7.95. I feel like I got robbed. Other non-FICO scores at least have similar ranges, but this Vantage Score has a range of 501-990. How do I even compare? I have Identity Guard and get the quarterly update. They use the CreditXpert Score (range of 350-850). I have found it to be within just a few points of my FICO scores every time. The score of 736 I was given is in line with my most recent FICO scores, but because the range is so different I'm concerned my FICO may be quite a bit lower. Can I order a FICO score for my Experian?
No you cannot order an Experian FICO score.
Any idea how Vantage Score compares?
And I've been meaing to ask...Is FAKO a real score or is that just what everyone calls non-FICO scoring?
@hardworkrebuilding wrote:Any idea how Vantage Score compares?
It's not a way that it compares to the traditional FICO score, but on what wavelength you're graded...VantageScore is weird in that very small fluctuations in balances and accounts and utilization and pretty much everything causes it to go up or down...pretty much 900-990 is an "A", 800-899 is a "B", 700-799 is a "C", and yadda yadda yadda.
As a person who lets a balance report on all my cards, my VantageScore goes up when there's a 0 balance on one, the balance decreases from the previous month, etc. Respectively, it goes down for the opposite. So it's very VERY sensitive to your account information. I'm sure having 0 balances report on all your cards except for one at 1%-2% will cause a huge jump in your VantageScore.
@hardworkrebuilding wrote:And I've been meaing to ask...Is FAKO a real score or is that just what everyone calls non-FICO scoring?
FAKO is just a term we use in reference to the non-lender used scores that several different companies put out.
I can't even call this score a FAKO because the range is so far off. At least the other FAKO scores I receive are from similar ranges. The sell you the score on the premise of knowing for the purposes of acquiring credit and knowing where you stand. You don't find out until after your $8 donation, that it has little resemblance to FICO. Like I said, I feel like I was robbed. Good thing I wasn't carrying much cash.
I reserve the somewhat disparaging term "FAKO' for those scores that have similar ranges to FICO, are sold to consumers only, and their nature is obfuscated with the intention of decieving consumers.
Vantage scores are scores that are actually used by a few lenders. They are scores with clearly stated ranges that are quite different from FICO ranges, and they use a subset of factors that FICO scores use in order to achieve a higher consistency across CRAs at the cost of somewhat lower risk assessment quality.
In general all scores, even ones with ranges similar to FICO, should be normalized in order to compare them with each other. The standard way normalization is done is to translate scores to rank percentiles or where does the score position one's credit quality as a percentage of the population. Even after doing this there is significant variability amongst score providers. The CFPB published a detailed paper on this a few months back.
@hardworkrebuilding wrote:And I've been meaing to ask...Is FAKO a real score or is that just what everyone calls non-FICO scoring?
FAKO is pronounced Fake-O