topic Re: Best Way to Monitor FICO? in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Best Way to Monitor FICO?

elsijfdl — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 18:08:46 GMT

Hi -

I recently sent an email to myFICO to cancel my subcription to Score Watch - I was paying the full $8.95/mo membership fee.

I am looking at equifax.com and I see you can subscribe to Score Watch for $7.95/mo. I also know there are coupons/special offers (e.g. through Walmart) that provide discounted access to the program.

So my question is: what is the best way to subscribe to a FICO-monitoring service?

Re: Best Way to Monitor FICO?

llecs — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 23:11:19 GMT

The only options are SW via here or EQ. I think FICO has a quarterly FICO monitoring via here. Instead of being limited to one CRA, I find it easier to pull all three via here once or twice per month or if there was a major change to my CRs as alerted by TC.

Re: Best Way to Monitor FICO?

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:50:31 GMT

I have score watch and truecredit - adds up to $23.90 a month. I decided to do it that way because I am actively working on repairing my credit and want to keep a very close eye on my credit report. That way I can check my reports daily to watch for changes due to DV or GW letters I send. (not FICO score) If my EQ Credit score moves by a significant # of points I can always purchase my FICO scores for TU and EX to see their change too. That of course is always optional and I don't have to if I don't need to know or if I don't have the money to spend on it.

If that is a bit excessive for you and you don't need to see your credit report daily then you could use truecredit ($8.95) to monitor your equifax score. It doesn't update daily like scorewatch and it only monitors EQ but it does catch the big stuff. Then you could purchase a SUZE kit and alternate pulling the other two scores whenever you saw the need.

OR you could just do as I described above and pull a different report each month. In that case the SUZE kit would last you 3 months.

There are lots of ways to go about it ... it all just depends on how obsessive you can be about seeing your score change.

Re: Best Way to Monitor FICO?

FicoPower — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 06:49:59 GMT

A free way is to get a Washington Mutual/JP Morgan credit card. Their site offers free fico score info. In fact that is what turned me onto this site since I wanted to see if their score matches what all three bereaus report and it is accurate.

Re: Best Way to Monitor FICO?

haulingthescoreup — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 10:11:51 GMT

HI, welcome to the forums!

The score through WaMu, or whatever we're calling them here, is your bankcard-enhanced FICO TransUnion score. It's a FICO score, but it's often different from the classic TU score, as it's weighted to predict CC behavior. The one you get from WaMu is a month old, but it's a decent way to track your TU.

We usually call it a PFICO, P being for Providian, the original issuer of the card. I suppose now it's a PWCFICO or something, for Providian-WaMu-Chase!

Re: Best Way to Monitor FICO?

MattH — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 16:59:27 GMT

@llecs wrote:
The only options are SW via here or EQ. I think FICO has a quarterly FICO monitoring via here. Instead of being limited to one CRA, I find it easier to pull all three via here once or twice per month or if there was a major change to my CRs as alerted by TC.

I have the Quarterly Monitoring through here, and a subscription for instant anytime access to my Experian reports (with their FAKO scores). I pay for the Quarterly Monitoring and my employers are paying for the Experian because they lost a backup tape of HR data. They say the tape WAS encrypted, there have not been any signs of identity theft, and the circumstances do not suggest this was a sophisticated crime: somebody grabbed N random packages from a shipping company truck (then probably sold what they could to a fence and tossed what they couldn't sell).

Shortly after the Experian subscription started I pulled all three of my FICO scores to make a same-day comparison with the FAKO score.