FILO, I have TC and I love it. Not for the scores, but for the fact that I can refresh the account daily and see any changes that are going on with my accounts. This helps to give me a trigger on when I should pull my FICOs. I think that it's well worth the $14.95 per month.
Starting Score: 469
I'm not a salesman for TC, but I have never even noticed one ad on the site. They always ask if I wanted to see special offers, but I have not once looked at it. I just proceed to yank my scores each day.
To each his own.
To each his own.
At one point they started running offers (= ads) for Discover, and I got all excited, thinking that they had realized my wonderfulness. But pretty soon those vanished, to be replaced by First Preemie and Aspire and the others. Someone once asked here if the ads were tailored to our reports, and I answered, Lord, I hope not. Anyway, like ByrdMan, I just click on past them.
It's all in getting familiar with them. I'm very used to TrueCredit by now (I certainly ought to be), and nothing startles me about it, including how EQ doesn't display correctly, just a series of empty boxes or X's. I usually admire all the pretty green squares for a couple of minutes, very few yellows left! --and then I click printable version. This shows me everything I need to know, including the exact date that the report was updated by each creditor, except for EQ, which only shows MM/YYYY.
I just got off the phone after canceling the EX three-in-one product through AmEx called CreditSecure. Turns out that I had the identical product through Quicken, I think it was, and I hated it. Even though you don't have to wait 24 hours + 1 minute to update as on TC, I found it busy and kindergarten-ish. Not to mention that I was getting 10 separate alerts for every new account back when I had my app-a-rama, courtesy of an excessive number of monitoring services.
So anyway, find something that makes you happy, but do realize that there is an initial WTH breaking-in period where you try to figure out what you're looking at. And also be aware that with any secondary credit report service, including myFICO, some things are going to turn up in funky categories, and it's worth comparing to the original full report to see how things get a bit warped in translation.
Edit, meant to add: I wouldn't want to go solo with either myFICO products or with TrueCredit. myFICO is too freakin' expensive, and it doesn't display the date that something was updated in MM/DD/YYYY; only in MM/YYYY, so it's not very useful in timing my early CC payments. And TrueCredit is worse than worthless for me when it comes to its scores and advice. I used to sneak peeks for a while until I found that their "advice" was getting tangled up with the real thing.
But the two together are a great way to monitor my reports and track my progress (and occasional regress
) in FICO score land.
Message Edited by haulingthescoreup on 06-12-2008 03:59 PM
It's all in getting familiar with them. I'm very used to TrueCredit by now (I certainly ought to be), and nothing startles me about it, including how EQ doesn't display correctly, just a series of empty boxes or X's. I usually admire all the pretty green squares for a couple of minutes, very few yellows left! --and then I click printable version. This shows me everything I need to know, including the exact date that the report was updated by each creditor, except for EQ, which only shows MM/YYYY.
I just got off the phone after canceling the EX three-in-one product through AmEx called CreditSecure. Turns out that I had the identical product through Quicken, I think it was, and I hated it. Even though you don't have to wait 24 hours + 1 minute to update as on TC, I found it busy and kindergarten-ish. Not to mention that I was getting 10 separate alerts for every new account back when I had my app-a-rama, courtesy of an excessive number of monitoring services.
So anyway, find something that makes you happy, but do realize that there is an initial WTH breaking-in period where you try to figure out what you're looking at. And also be aware that with any secondary credit report service, including myFICO, some things are going to turn up in funky categories, and it's worth comparing to the original full report to see how things get a bit warped in translation.
Edit, meant to add: I wouldn't want to go solo with either myFICO products or with TrueCredit. myFICO is too freakin' expensive, and it doesn't display the date that something was updated in MM/DD/YYYY; only in MM/YYYY, so it's not very useful in timing my early CC payments. And TrueCredit is worse than worthless for me when it comes to its scores and advice. I used to sneak peeks for a while until I found that their "advice" was getting tangled up with the real thing.
But the two together are a great way to monitor my reports and track my progress (and occasional regress
) in FICO score land.Message Edited by haulingthescoreup on 06-12-2008 03:59 PM
