topic Why FAKO scores are now officially worthless! in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Why FAKO scores are now officially worthless!

smc733 — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 18:21:32 GMT

I use CreditKarma, just for the hell of it, because its free. I will now be closing it, because a website this incompetent doesn't deserve my SSN.

I closed an account that was young. All CK tells me is that "+" because "your average age of open accounts is up 1 year", then it DINGS the score.

Re: Why FAKO scores are now officially worthless!

llecs — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 18:26:58 GMT

Yep. They calculate AAoA much differently than FICO. Mine was off by 3 years.

Re: Why FAKO scores are now officially worthless!

smc733 — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 18:53:53 GMT

@llecs wrote:
Yep. They calculate AAoA much differently than FICO. Mine was off by 3 years.

Yep, they only calculate it by "open" lines, but if the the AAoA goes UP, how does the score go down????

Re: Why FAKO scores are now officially worthless!

Imhotrodcrazy — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 19:48:14 GMT

CK has always ignored a 19 yr old credit line of mine. It states that my "oldest" account is 5 yrs and 7 months.

Re: Why FAKO scores are now officially worthless!

fused — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 22:16:42 GMT

CK has my AAoA (only open accounts) at 13 years and 3 months. Its really 9 years though. I'm in the FICO 800+ club, but my vantage and auto scores aren't great. I'm glad the score (FICO) that most lenders look at is very high.

Re: Why FAKO scores are now officially worthless!

Booner72 — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 00:59:25 GMT

Lost 10 points on CK just this weekend bc they are claiming I lost an account. Nothing here is different.

Re: Why FAKO scores are now officially worthless!

RobertEG — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 15:01:13 GMT

Since they are not used by most creditors, I would concur that their worth, when it comes to using your credit score in an application process, is of little value.

For that reason alone, I would not use them.

However, I would not go so far as to say they are "officially worthless."

They show patterns, and alert you to problems, and their potential impact. They thus have value in monitoring the general impact of events on your score. But they are not useful in quatifying that impact when it comes to ultimate use of your credit score.

Many consumers rely on FAKO scores for tracking, often because they are included with many creditor monitoring plans.

As long as one knows that they must pull their FICO-generated score when involved in a credit process, I dont think the FAKO score monitoring is totall useless.

Re: Why FAKO scores are now officially worthless!

Anonymous — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 15:36:00 GMT

@RobertEG wrote:
Since they are not used by most creditors, I would concur that their worth, when it comes to using your credit score in an application process, is of little value.
For that reason alone, I would not use them.
However, I would not go so far as to say they are "officially worthless."
They show patterns, and alert you to problems, and their potential impact. They thus have value in monitoring the general impact of events on your score. But they are not useful in quatifying that impact when it comes to ultimate use of your credit score.
Many consumers rely on FAKO scores for tracking, often because they are included with many creditor monitoring plans.
As long as one knows that they must pull their FICO-generated score when involved in a credit process, I dont think the FAKO score monitoring is totall useless.

I would feel a lot differently about FAKO scores if that were true.

The reality is they do not show patterns.

When your FICO goes up, your FAKO can go down, stay the same or go up.

When your FICO goes down, your FAKO can go up, stay the same or go down.

When your FICO stays the same, your FAKO can go up, go down, or stay the same.

They are not dependable in alerting you to problems or their potential impact.

For the same reasons stated above - that is when your FAKO goes up, stays the same, or goes down - your FICO will or will not follow the same pattern. IME, there very very frequently movement on FAKO when there is no movement on FICO and vice versa.

Because FAKO's do not show patterns and do not alert you to problems, I find them useless. And I've spent a good amount of time and money looking for any useful patterns.

Because FAKO's alert you to non-issues and repeatedly offer consumers false hope in false high FAKO scores, or conversely false despair in low FAKO scores, I find them misleading. We repeatedly and frequently have posts on these forums from folks who think they're ready for a financial move when in fact they are not, and from folks who think they're hopelessly far away from a FICO score goal when they have in fact surpassed it.

In addition, the FAKO scores come complete with advice. Following FAKO advice can, and will, lower FICO scores.

Re: Why FAKO scores are now officially worthless!

llecs — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 15:48:11 GMT

To add, in OP's example, the FAKO isn't even factoring in the length of history of a recently closed tradeline that's on his/her report. In other examples, this same service is completely ignoring active and open tradelines.

Re: Why FAKO scores are now officially worthless!

pizzadude — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 16:53:51 GMT

In my experience FAKO scores are not completely worthless ~ they can be compared against themselves, just not against FICO® as others have pointed out.

I was recently declined for a few credit products, and based on my historical records of my FAKO scores I was able to identify an update on my reports that triggered both a subsequent FAKO and FICO® score drop.

Re: Why FAKO scores are now officially worthless!

Booner72 — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 23:19:26 GMT

llecs: Would you say the TU98 is as worthless as all the rest, or in your experience here, are they more reliable to patterns etc.? I bought mine today and was told my score is 661 - If only that could be true!

Re: Why FAKO scores are now officially worthless!

llecs — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 23:39:21 GMT

@Booner72 wrote:
llecs: Would you say the TU98 is as worthless as all the rest, or in your experience here, are they more reliable to patterns etc.? I bought mine today and was told my score is 661 - If only that could be true!

If you compare TU98 and TU04, your TU04 could easily be higher or lower. In that sense there is no correlation. However, if one went up, and unlike FICO-FAKO comparisons, you could often expect the other to go up too. Problem is that as of this post, you can't get TU04 except from your lender anyway so comparing the too is impossible unless you applied somewhere that pulled TU04.

I wouldn't say TU98 is worthless. Millions of TU98 FICO scores were pulled last year. Somebody is using them. If your lender pulls TU04, you could probably find another that pulls TU98. There's one lender I work with all the time, Lending Club, that uses TU98. Seems like Freddie/Fannie still uses TU98. I'm certain there are others.

Re: Why FAKO scores are now officially worthless!

Booner72 — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:15:20 GMT

Unfortunately my lender uses the 04 version. UGH.

Re: Why FAKO scores are now officially worthless!

CS800 — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 02:09:29 GMT

Strangely enough, CK says my Vantage score is 645 and myfico TU is 646

What's more strange now is that my EQ and TU FICO are both at 646

I have EX Plusscore at 644. I cancelled the service since I will be getting my EX FICO in a week. So we will see how different the Plusscore is from the FICO.

Re: Why FAKO scores are now officially worthless!

GregB — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 13:55:43 GMT

@CS800 wrote:
Strangely enough, CK says my Vantage score is 645 and myfico TU is 646

These are completely different scores. They don't even have ranges that match since Vantage tops out at 990 and FICO scores top out at 850. Any similarity is coincidence.

What's more strange now is that my EQ and TU FICO are both at 646

Different versions of FICO and based upon data from two different CRAs.

I have EX Plusscore at 644. I cancelled the service since I will be getting my EX FICO in a week. So we will see how different the Plusscore is from the FICO.

Completely different score models base upon the same data.

Re: Why FAKO scores are now officially worthless!

Anonymous — Mon, 04 May 2015 00:25:00 GMT

Consumer credit score models Areca joke and should not be taken seriously. They are educational tools only, implemented to make money off the consumers who are intrigued by the credit scoring racket. Case in point, I recently successfully disputed a public record (judgment) and a third party collection, meanwhile, opened 2 new trade lines (cc's) and although I incurred several hard inquiries in the process, my Equifax consumer score dropped a whopping 60 points. As I look at my cr (credit report) I have a majority of PAA accounts as opposed to 2 very old and closed accouterments showing late payments. I then got curious and checked my FICO score and was relieved that it actually jumped up 30 points. What kind of misleading garbage the cbs are pulling, but beware. Your cr is what truly matters to lenders. I have 7 cc's going back 11.5 years showing PAA, and Exifax

Re: Why FAKO scores are now officially worthless!

Anonymous — Mon, 04 May 2015 00:26:01 GMT

Equifax consumer scoring model says my cs is 505. Go figure

Re: Why FAKO scores are now officially worthless!

MarineVietVet — Mon, 04 May 2015 00:38:15 GMT

Welcome to myFICO.

You've resurrected a four year old thread and often information that old is completely out of date.

I'm going to lock the thread. You're welcome to repost your concerns/comments in a new thread.