Can Credit Monitoring Services Lower Your FICO scores?

Anonymous — Thu, 21 May 2009 01:55:57 GMT

I was looking for a good unlimited 3-in-1 credit reports and daily monitoring service. I came across an article from this site:

http://www.allbusiness.com/personal-finance/4967535-1.html

The author claims that using a credit monitoring service can lower the FICO score. Is that true?

Also, if you can recommend a good site for unlimited 3-in-1 report and monitoring, I would appreciate it.

Thanks

Re: Can Credit Monitoring Services Lower Your FICO scores?

haulingthescoreup — Thu, 21 May 2009 02:08:08 GMT

Wow, that is so completely false.

Pulling your own credit is a "soft" inquiry, and softs don't affect your score. When a potential lender pulls your report to decide whether to extend credit, that's a "hard" inquiry, which can drop your score.

Others who might pull softs: current lenders checking up on you, to see if you're getting in trouble elsewhere; and other lenders who might extend you an offer (these are very limited report views.)

As for a good source for monitoring, please understand that there is monitoring reports, and there is monitoring FICO scores.

There are several sources that still allow you to pull daily reports from all three, and they all seem to be from Experian. There is CreditSecure, available if you are an American Express cardholder, and CreditCheckTotal, and several others. Many of us have come to realize that they don't really update reports daily --more like weekly, although you can pull all you like.

The TransUnion monitoring services were the best, IMO, but they have pretty much all cut back on the daily pulls for all three. These include TrueCredit, Chase ID protection, and others.

As for monitoring your FICO scores, no one does that on a daily basis. For one thing, you can't buy your FICO EX (Experian) score any more, as of February 13, 2009, per their decision. For the other two, you could pull daily here if you like, but I hope you've won the lottery recently. FICO scores cost, unlike the FAKO scores supplied by the credit monitoring services.

Your best bet is to find a monitoring service that you kinda like, and read here to find out how changes on your credit reports affect your FICO scores. Then you'll know when it's worth paying to pull your FICO scores.

Re: Can Credit Monitoring Services Lower Your FICO scores?

Anonymous — Thu, 21 May 2009 08:35:51 GMT

No way. I have had TrueCredit for a couple years now and my score has gone up (more likely due to paying off my CCs).

False, it doesn't hurt your score.

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topic Can Credit Monitoring Services Lower Your FICO scores? in General Credit Topics

Can Credit Monitoring Services Lower Your FICO scores?

Re: Can Credit Monitoring Services Lower Your FICO scores?

Re: Can Credit Monitoring Services Lower Your FICO scores?