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@0x47 wrote:
@HiLine wrote:
@0x47 wrote:With that many changes, I find it VERY difficult to believe your score has not changed. I bet if you pay for a report (go figure, you have to give them more money) you will find that Score Watch is broken.
I reckon you would lose that bet every time. Some people have tried that, and all found the paid score consistent with the credit monitoring score.
Maybe, but at least in my case I had a 30 point swing go unannounced with score watch so I have zero faith in the product. I called in late last week about it and the rep confirmed that my settings were correct. All in all a very frustrating experience and I will be ending my subscription after the 3-month minimum.
The myFICO products? I don't think it is worth the subscription fees.
The forums, the mods, and the knowledge base we can all contribute to? Invaluable.
I posted this same thing a few weeks ago and got blasted for wanting to know the exact days between score checks with no credit alert. I also am going to get rid of scorewatch, it's a bust. It seemed to be working just fine until after my free trial. I've even been keeping a spreadsheet of my score changes so I could try to find some sort of pattern...
Alert Date | Days Between | Score | Notes |
02/28/13 | 584 | Starting score | |
03/07/13 | 7.00 | 604 | Discover Balance and Macy's Balance Paid |
03/15/13 | 8.00 | 610 | Chase Tradeline Deleted |
03/18/13 | 3.00 | 616 | Walmart Balance Paid |
03/26/13 | 8.00 | 616 | No Change |
04/05/13 | 10.00 | 616 | No Change |
04/06/13 | 1.00 | 627 | Dell Dispute |
04/13/13 | 7.00 | 627 | No Change |
04/15/13 | 2.00 | 639 | Bought new report |
04/23/13 | 8.00 | ? | No alerts yet |
It appears that if you go ahead and pay for a report, then you don't get an alert from the time of the last alert - it must be from the time that you paid for the new one. Still waiting on a scorewatch alert, even if its to say there is no change - 8 days and counting.... again.
My experience has not been good with SW lately. I think that when you pull your score yourself because you just can't wait any longer, it then triggers a score alert. I have had this happen at least 4 times where I waited thinking surely I should have an alert by now. When I finally pulled it myself, I immediately (within a few minutes) also had an alert and every time there was a score change. This happened on 3/22, 4/3, 4/12, and 4/18. My settings have always been correct. Even before this, I was going months without an alert and I have been paying a LOT of debt down. Also, see the three issues I posted in another forum below (the first one might be an Equifax instead of myfico issue):
First Issue: I have an account that's been reporting 60 days late for the past four months. I received an alert today that my score had gone down 23 points and this account is now reporting 30 days late. Shouldn't my score have gone up instead? There are no other changes.
Second issue: The alert I received today said that this change was reported in March; however, I pulled my report here on April 3 and it did not reflect that change.
Third issue: I was waiting for an alert about a different account at beginning of April, but never received, which is why I pulled my report on April 3. At that time, my score had gone up, but no alert from myfico. It went up due to me paying down utilization.
I am going to cancel before they charge me again unless it starts working really soon. What is the point if I'm having to pull three times a month anyway? I agree with whoever said it worked great during the free trial. I'm willing to listen if anyone has an explanation though.
@rockbottem wrote:My experience has not been good with SW lately. I think that when you pull your score yourself because you just can't wait any longer, it then triggers a score alert. I have had this happen at least 4 times where I waited thinking surely I should have an alert by now. When I finally pulled it myself, I immediately (within a few minutes) also had an alert and every time there was a score change. This happened on 3/22, 4/3, 4/12, and 4/18. My settings have always been correct. Even before this, I was going months without an alert and I have been paying a LOT of debt down. Also, see the three issues I posted in another forum below (the first one might be an Equifax instead of myfico issue):
First Issue: I have an account that's been reporting 60 days late for the past four months. I received an alert today that my score had gone down 23 points and this account is now reporting 30 days late. Shouldn't my score have gone up instead? There are no other changes.
Second issue: The alert I received today said that this change was reported in March; however, I pulled my report here on April 3 and it did not reflect that change.
Third issue: I was waiting for an alert about a different account at beginning of April, but never received, which is why I pulled my report on April 3. At that time, my score had gone up, but no alert from myfico. It went up due to me paying down utilization.
I am going to cancel before they charge me again unless it starts working really soon. What is the point if I'm having to pull three times a month anyway? I agree with whoever said it worked great during the free trial. I'm willing to listen if anyone has an explanation though.
#1...Remember that SW alerts only show a NET score change, and most of the time that score change isn't 100% fully attributed to that alert. For example (I use this over and over) I got a SW alert once for a +20 FICO change because I added an inquiry. Inquiries do not increase FICO scores. My increase was due to a dropped baddie and that produced the +20. Had I fully associated the score change with the alert reason, then I'd have to walk away thinking that inquiries bump your score by 20. Make sense? In your case even if a status changed to 30 days, there could be other things that changed within your report to produce that drop in score. For example, maybe util bumped ever so slightly (under the 5% threshold for an alert) or maybe there was a CLD while having balances report on your CCs or a dropped old account or maybe a baddie updated. Any of these could produce that drop and there would be no SW alert. Or it very could be due to that one account. Let's say a baddie had not updated in a long time. A recent reporting date on an old non-updating baddie can result in a FICO drop.
#2...Not clear...was the late from March or some other month/year? The alert and the report pull align. If you pulled in early April your EQ FICO report and the late was there, then an update via a SW alert would point that it's now gone. And remember, SW alerts do not alert you to dropped lates, nor does it tell you when an older late was added. If your status was 60 past due, you could have a dozen lates drop and still have the same status.
#3...I was always told that you get alerted even if you pull a report. IME, there were a couple of times I didn't get a score alert after pulling an EQ FICO report. So, I dunno. I do know that your EQ FICO isn't monitored daily. It's every 7-10 days or so, or so it says. It's also based on your set target score. So if your new EQ FICO hits or surpasses your set target score, then you'll get alerted. I know many in here forget to reset their target score. It has to be reset every time the score changes and should be set to exactly match your EQ FICO.
@llecs wrote:
@rockbottem wrote:My experience has not been good with SW lately. I think that when you pull your score yourself because you just can't wait any longer, it then triggers a score alert. I have had this happen at least 4 times where I waited thinking surely I should have an alert by now. When I finally pulled it myself, I immediately (within a few minutes) also had an alert and every time there was a score change. This happened on 3/22, 4/3, 4/12, and 4/18. My settings have always been correct. Even before this, I was going months without an alert and I have been paying a LOT of debt down. Also, see the three issues I posted in another forum below (the first one might be an Equifax instead of myfico issue):
First Issue: I have an account that's been reporting 60 days late for the past four months. I received an alert today that my score had gone down 23 points and this account is now reporting 30 days late. Shouldn't my score have gone up instead? There are no other changes.
Second issue: The alert I received today said that this change was reported in March; however, I pulled my report here on April 3 and it did not reflect that change.
Third issue: I was waiting for an alert about a different account at beginning of April, but never received, which is why I pulled my report on April 3. At that time, my score had gone up, but no alert from myfico. It went up due to me paying down utilization.
I am going to cancel before they charge me again unless it starts working really soon. What is the point if I'm having to pull three times a month anyway? I agree with whoever said it worked great during the free trial. I'm willing to listen if anyone has an explanation though.
#1...Remember that SW alerts only show a NET score change, and most of the time that score change isn't 100% fully attributed to that alert. For example (I use this over and over) I got a SW alert once for a +20 FICO change because I added an inquiry. Inquiries do not increase FICO scores. My increase was due to a dropped baddie and that produced the +20. Had I fully associated the score change with the alert reason, then I'd have to walk away thinking that inquiries bump your score by 20. Make sense? In your case even if a status changed to 30 days, there could be other things that changed within your report to produce that drop in score. For example, maybe util bumped ever so slightly (under the 5% threshold for an alert) or maybe there was a CLD while having balances report on your CCs or a dropped old account or maybe a baddie updated. Any of these could produce that drop and there would be no SW alert. Or it very could be due to that one account. Let's say a baddie had not updated in a long time. A recent reporting date on an old non-updating baddie can result in a FICO drop.
#2...Not clear...was the late from March or some other month/year? The alert and the report pull align. If you pulled in early April your EQ FICO report and the late was there, then an update via a SW alert would point that it's now gone. And remember, SW alerts do not alert you to dropped lates, nor does it tell you when an older late was added. If your status was 60 past due, you could have a dozen lates drop and still have the same status.
#3...I was always told that you get alerted even if you pull a report. IME, there were a couple of times I didn't get a score alert after pulling an EQ FICO report. So, I dunno. I do know that your EQ FICO isn't monitored daily. It's every 7-10 days or so, or so it says. It's also based on your set target score. So if your new EQ FICO hits or surpasses your set target score, then you'll get alerted. I know many in here forget to reset their target score. It has to be reset every time the score changes and should be set to exactly match your EQ FICO.
llecs, thanks for putting it together so it makes sense. I haunted the forums before this for hours trying to figure out how all this works - what I don't understand is when scorewatch actually does come to its 7-10 day check thing, without an alert. I just don't get why scorewatch has to be so mysterious and difficult. Would it really be that hard to somehow standardize how often it checks? And why the whole score reset, at or above, just to fool the system into alerting? Does anyone else think this thing is purposely inconsistent, just so us impatient people pull a report and pay the 14.95? I guess its a good tactic, because after 9 days of not knowing my score, knowing that baddies are aging or removed, balances paid down, accounts aging to six months/one year I know for a fact that my score has increased and I want to see it in big blue numbers. I'm applying for a mortage and my whole future depends on my score at this very moment - so yeah, if I don't get an alert tomorrow (score has been reset since the moment I pulled the last report) I'm going to pull a goll darned report again and when this is all over, I'm going to flip myfico.com the bird.
Received no alert for weeks knowing lots of activity was taking place that would adjust my EQ score and report. Went ahead and purchased a new EQ report and score and sure enough my score went up 19 points and I received NO alert. Just got an email saying I had no SW alerts this week. Same email as last week. What is the point in paying for this SW if it doesn't work?
I cancelled SW today. Not paying for something that doesn't work. Funny thing is I bought SW from Equifax this morning and low and behold what a huge difference in score compared to myFICO score watch.