topic Re: Where to obtain FREE monthly FICO scores in Understanding FICO® Scoring

Where to obtain FREE monthly FICO scores

kkapdolee — Tue, 21 Oct 2014 01:49:43 GMT

I would like make a post regarding where one can obtain free monthly FICO scores and keep track for those who don't already know.

Here are the EIGHT (current as of 10/20 - Citi announcement for January) places that I know of. Please leave a comment if you know anywhere else.

1. Walmart Credit Card

There are two cards but either one works.

TU FICO 08 Classic (300-850)

http://www.walmart.com/cp/Walmart-Credit-Card/632402

2. Merrick Credit Card

There are two cards but either one works. Need to set up paperless statements to receive free FICO scores.

TU FICO 08 Bankcard (250-900)

http://www.merrickbank.com/Credit-Products/

3. FNBO Credit Card

Update: they have now restricted access to Nebraska and surrounding states from a user report - this is no longer generally available

There are several different cards. AFAIK, some of them offer free FICO right now and some will start offering next year.

EX FICO 08 Bankcard (250-900)

https://www.firstnational.com/site/personal/credit-card/

4. DCU Checking + Direct Deposit or Credit Card

Must have either [Checking Acocunt + Direct Deposit + ] OR [Checking Acount + Credit Card]. Must be a member.

Update: You no longer needs a credit card with them; just a checking account will do.

EQ FICO 04 Classic (300-850)

https://www.dcu.org/personal-banking/checking-choices.html

5. PSECU Credit Card

Need to be a Pennsylvania resident to join
EX FICO Risk Model v2 (98) (300-850)

https://www.psecu.com/

6. Barclay's Credit Card

The service just started. Don't know if it will be monthly yet.

TU FICO 08 Classic (300-850) (same as Walmart's)

http://www.aboutbarclaycardus.com/prodsresource_products.php

7. Discover Credit Card

The official announcement was just made for the free monthly FICO score from TU.

TU FICO 08 Classic (300-850) (Same as Walmart's and Barclay's)

https://www.discover.com/credit-cards/member-benefits/fico-credit-score.html?SCMPGN=va_dcp_fico

8. Penfed - Pentagon Federal Credit Union

Membership with active checking account

Equifax Pinnacle (NextGen 150-950) uncertain if 1.0 or 2.0

http://blog.penfed.org/your-fico-score/

In addition to that, you can of course purchase your FICO scores from MyFICO.com.

TU FICO 8 Classic (300-850)

EQ FICO 8 Classic (300-850)

EX FICO 8 Classic (300-850)

Personally, I would go with DCU and either Walmart or Barclay's to get the two most important scores (FICO 04 Classic and FICO 08 Classic).

EDIT: I've recently discovered some more ways of getting free FICO scores.

1. Capital One CLI. It is all SP. Request a CLI and if they deny you, they will send you a letter with your EQ 04 Classic on it. If they approve, you can ask for another CLI immediately afterwards and it will be an automatic decline with your FICO score.

2. Apply for a loan at Lending Club. All SP as well. If they deny you, they give you what appears to be your TU 08 FICO score. You can try to be declined by requesting the maximum loan amount and putting down very low income.

Below is a summary chart. Hope this helps. --NOTE: the summary chart is out of date currently as of 10/20/14. --Rev

To add, some of these score ranges are not precise for the FICO '04 and earlier models as it's not possible to max the scorecard.

Re: Where to obtain free monthly FICO scores

penguin11 — Fri, 01 Nov 2013 14:49:14 GMT

Does anyone know if FNBO is prime only? I am 23 post chapter 7 discharged. 690+ FICO across the board, 40K CL with a 2 % utilization.

Do I have a chance for a credit card to get the free Experian FICO? Thank you for any input.

Re: Where to obtain free monthly FICO scores

kkapdolee — Fri, 01 Nov 2013 15:39:29 GMT

@penguin11 wrote:
Does anyone know if FNBO is prime only? I am 23 post chapter 7 discharged. 690+ FICO across the board, 40K CL with a 2 % utilization.
Do I have a chance for a credit card to get the free Experian FICO? Thank you for any input.

I do not yet have an account with FNBO but sounds like you have a shot at getting their CC.

I think it largely depends on which score FNBO pulls because the scores can vary a lot depending on version especially if you have a relatively short history.

I have a short history with AAoA at 9 months. My FICO scores were off by more than 70 points on the same week.

Capital one rejected me because the EQ FICO 04 they pulled was 681.

Amex and Fidelity accepted me because the TU FICO 08 they pulled was 750+

Also, keep in mind that the EX FICO 08 Bankcard that FNBO gives is not the Classic score most people are familiar with. It is a Bankcard Enhanced score that ranges from 250-900. AFAIK though, Chase always uses Bankcard Enhanced FICO scores and never the Classic scores on their CC apps. At least that was the case for me anyways and I had a lot of apps with them.. more than any other lender.

Re: Where to obtain FREE monthly FICO scores

credit_challenged09 — Sat, 02 Nov 2013 20:45:01 GMT

good information...

Re: Where to obtain FREE monthly FICO scores

EW800 — Sun, 04 May 2014 14:08:31 GMT

Good information. Thank you.

Are we certain that Capital One always does SP for CLI requests?

Re: Where to obtain FREE monthly FICO scores

Anonymous — Sun, 04 May 2014 14:18:59 GMT

A CLI request may be a hard pull, which will ding your score a bit.

Beyond that, the score you get may be proprietary, or one of the FICO variants, and thus not very useful.

One of my CCs uses a scoring model with a 150-950 range.

Re: Where to obtain FREE monthly FICO scores

gh17 — Sun, 04 May 2014 15:22:43 GMT

Glad I'm not the only one who was doing that with Capital One.

Re: Where to obtain FREE monthly FICO scores

gh17 — Sun, 04 May 2014 15:31:24 GMT

And yeah, Capital One is a soft pull:

"Will a request for a credit line increase affect my credit score?

When you request a credit line increase online or in our automated phone system, our review to determine your eligibility will not impact your credit score. To check your eligibility for an increase, we use the information that we normally receive from the credit bureaus each month. This does not generate an additional inquiry."

I wasn't 100% sure it was FICO and if so what version though - it's not totally clear in the letter, if I remember right.

Also, it kind of lags - I checked in April and it had a February pull. Clearly they aren't doing a new inquiry.

Re: Where to obtain FREE monthly FICO scores

Revelate — Sun, 04 May 2014 16:02:43 GMT

@gh17 wrote:
Glad I'm not the only one who was doing that with Capital One.

Am curious, but why when you have a freebie monthly TU '08 pull in your siggy anyway and it isn't hard to establish other freebie ones without doing something that likely is going to get noticed eventually by the lender in question?

Re: Where to obtain FREE monthly FICO scores

Nostradamuz — Sun, 04 May 2014 16:23:11 GMT

Capital One said me online today that a request of credit limit increment in a credit card online or by phone will not be a hard inquiry never. It is a surprise for me.

Re: Where to obtain FREE monthly FICO scores

Revelate — Sun, 04 May 2014 16:43:32 GMT

@Nostradamuz wrote:
Capital One said me online today that a request of credit limit increment in a credit card online or by phone will not be a hard inquiry never. It is a surprise for me.

They moved to the Amex model more or less. That said, just because there's no inquiry, the lender in question will have a record of the event and may use that to your disadvantage as making a CLI attempt to see a FICO score is way on the outer edges of the bell curve for consumer-modeled behavior. All I'm suggesting is there's better ways to accomplish the same thing.

Re: Where to obtain FREE monthly FICO scores

gh17 — Sun, 04 May 2014 19:57:07 GMT

@Revelate wrote:
@gh17 wrote:
Glad I'm not the only one who was doing that with Capital One.
Am curious, but why when you have a freebie monthly TU '08 pull in your siggy anyway and it isn't hard to establish other freebie ones without doing something that likely is going to get noticed eventually by the lender in question?

Just got Discover and Sallie Mae last week.

Re: Where to obtain FREE monthly FICO scores

gh17 — Sun, 04 May 2014 20:01:18 GMT

Like some of you, I'd be skeptical of using it overly frequently just because Capital One probably keeps a record somewhere (but who knows). But if you're looking for credit limit increases anyway, it's good to know. A few times a year won't hurt.

Re: Where to obtain FREE monthly FICO scores

LearningMoreAboutCredit — Sun, 04 May 2014 22:48:33 GMT

@Nostradamuz wrote:
It is very bad to apply for any CLI to get a free FICO score only, because this action decreases the FICO score by 5 points, because it is a hard inquiry in your credit report.

That is true but with creditors like Capital One it is a SP 99% of the time. I, for one, have used this method numerous times over the years.

Re: Where to obtain FREE monthly FICO scores

Revelate — Sun, 04 May 2014 23:05:32 GMT

@gh17 wrote:
Like some of you, I'd be skeptical of using it overly frequently just because Capital One probably keeps a record somewhere (but who knows). But if you're looking for credit limit increases anyway, it's good to know. A few times a year won't hurt.

While I've never worked for Capital One, I can absolutely state that such things are tracked by other lenders: data storage is incredibly cheap, and they will often store any information no matter how irrelevant it is to their customer base in hopes of using it later either in "Big Data" type projects or even directly in their underwriting... especially with something core to their business products such as CLI's.

I don't buy the few times a year won't hurt argument, but each is entitled to their own opinions on the matter. You could be right, I'm just not willing to bet a tradeline on it, especially given there's easily obtainable freebie FICO's that make this particular process irrelevant in addition to potentially silly or worse.

Re: Where to obtain FREE monthly FICO scores

kkapdolee — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 14:57:15 GMT

@Revelate wrote:
@gh17 wrote:
Glad I'm not the only one who was doing that with Capital One.
Am curious, but why when you have a freebie monthly TU '08 pull in your siggy anyway and it isn't hard to establish other freebie ones without doing something that likely is going to get noticed eventually by the lender in question?

At the time I made this thread, Cap1 CLI request was a soft pull on EQ04 classic not TU08. I'm not sure if that has changed or not.

The reason I used to do this was because I had no regard for Cap1 and couldn't care less if they cancelled my card for requesting CLIs too often. They were no good to me so why not try to get some free FICO scores out of them? I've taken the Facebook EO route and got finally got a CLI and a PC from them later. I don't do CLI requests for them anymore because I've opened DCU since then.

Re: Where to obtain FREE monthly FICO scores

kkapdolee — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 14:59:43 GMT

@Revelate wrote:
@gh17 wrote:
Like some of you, I'd be skeptical of using it overly frequently just because Capital One probably keeps a record somewhere (but who knows). But if you're looking for credit limit increases anyway, it's good to know. A few times a year won't hurt.
While I've never worked for Capital One, I can absolutely state that such things are tracked by other lenders: data storage is incredibly cheap, and they will often store any information no matter how irrelevant it is to their customer base in hopes of using it later either in "Big Data" type projects or even directly in their underwriting... especially with something core to their business products such as CLI's.

I don't buy the few times a year won't hurt argument, but each is entitled to their own opinions on the matter. You could be right, I'm just not willing to bet a tradeline on it, especially given there's easily obtainable freebie FICO's that make this particular process irrelevant in addition to potentially silly or worse.

If Cap1 CLI FICO is still EQ04, that one is not easily obtainable. In fact, out of all freebie FICOs, I'd say this one is the hardest. And now that MyFico EQ04 is gone, it's hard to get it even with pay. The only place I know that gives it to you for free is DCU and you have to have both a checking acct and a cc to get it and it's a hassle to open accounts with them as they ask for your incom verification and everything.

Plus, I'm sure there are a lot of people who just don't care about a tradeline from Cap1. Not all tradelines are equal.

Re: Where to obtain FREE monthly FICO scores

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 16:08:51 GMT

Is the EX score on myFICO a legitimate score or is it a FAKO?

Re: Where to obtain FREE monthly FICO scores

Dw4250 — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 17:07:08 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Is the EX score on myFICO a legitimate score or is it a FAKO?

The score on here is real (EX 08), which many ccc use.

Re: Where to obtain FREE monthly FICO scores

Dw4250 — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 17:24:16 GMT

@Revelate wrote:

While I've never worked for Capital One, I can absolutely state that such things are tracked by other lenders: data storage is incredibly cheap, and they will often store any information no matter how irrelevant it is to their customer base in hopes of using it later either in "Big Data" type projects or even directly in their underwriting... especially with something core to their business products such as CLI's.

I don't buy the few times a year won't hurt argument, but each is entitled to their own opinions on the matter. You could be right, I'm just not willing to bet a tradeline on it, especially given there's easily obtainable freebie FICO's that make this particular process irrelevant in addition to potentially silly or worse.

+1000

Asking for a CLI strictly for a FICO score seems pretty reckless to me. As you said, to each his/her own. I understand the urge to know your scores at all times....I still have fits of score obsession at times. But if you've been doing this for awhile, you should have a general idea where you are at scorewise, what you can do to maximize them, etc. A good rule of thumb is if your CRs have the same tradelines, same information, AAofA, INQ, etc....your scores will be pretty close together (within 20-30 pts of each other).

Most variation between reports is seen not from scoring model variation (98, 04, 08, etc), but rather based on the variation of the information contained in your individual reports. For example, if you have 1 INQ on your EX report, and 14 on your TU report, chances are your TU score will be lower. Or if you have an old collection reporting on EX but not the other two, that collection will drive down your score on that EX report.