topic Re: credit.com and CCT in General Credit Topics

credit.com and CCT

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 07:40:48 GMT

Hey everyone

So until today I was using CK to monitor my credit reports. Nice service as I get access to TU and EQ reports, but I thougth it was time to get the full picture so I signed up for credit.com, to also access info form EX. Everything looked nice until I noticed I had 3 inquiries in the last year, when I really expected 0. The bad thing is that unlike CK, they don't give your full report, but only some tidbits of information. It seems my oldest inquiry is about a year old, so that must be from when I got my Discover; I guess they didn't only pull TU as I thought. But then there are another two and the most recent one is from last month. I didn't apply for any other card since Discover so I really don't know what those two could be. I'm thinking of two possibilities: an application for a new apartment and a CLI I asked from Discover. But the rental agent had told me they would only do a SP and as for Discover, I hit the button online, they didn't approve me and asked to access my CR instead, but I refused, so that should also be a SP. Even if one of them was a HP, I think it's very unlikely that both of them were HPs, especially the Discover CLI. So I'm wondering if that could be a mistake on credit.com. What was more weird is that even with 3 inquiries in less than a year, they gave me an A+ score in that category; I feel like this should be more like A-/B+. On the other hand any other piece of information they provided was accurate.

So now I'm thinking I would access my CR using a different service. The best that comes in mind is CreditCheckTotal, that offers CRs and FICO 8 from all 3 bureaus for $1. To summarize I have the following two questions:

1) Could the info on the number of inquiries from credit.com be wrong? Anyone had any such experience?

2) What do people think about CCT? I plan to cancel after a week so I don't have to pay for their full service. Anyhting else you would suggest? I know I can also get one free CR from each bureau, which I might do, but I want something more immediate for now.

Thanks

Re: credit.com and CCT

Anonymous — Sun, 10 Apr 2016 22:06:33 GMT

I've been using credit.com for over a year, and the info has always been accurate. I love CCT. I signed up for the $1 deal, called to cancel and got their half price for 12 months thing. That's up this month, so I may cancel. Not sure yet.

Re: credit.com and CCT

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 01:22:27 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I've been using credit.com for over a year, and the info has always been accurate. I love CCT. I signed up for the $1 deal, called to cancel and got their half price for 12 months thing. That's up this month, so I may cancel. Not sure yet.

So I'd have to call in to cancel? That's not convenient, but I'll probably sign up anyway. Did you have to prepay for a full year when they offered half price? That's not worth it for me, but I would do it for a month or two.

Re: credit.com and CCT

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 01:35:35 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
I've been using credit.com for over a year, and the info has always been accurate. I love CCT. I signed up for the $1 deal, called to cancel and got their half price for 12 months thing. That's up this month, so I may cancel. Not sure yet.
So I'd have to call in to cancel? That's not convenient, but I'll probably sign up anyway. Did you have to prepay for a full year when they offered half price? That's not worth it for me, but I would do it for a month or two.

It's billed monthly.

Re: credit.com and CCT

takeshi74 — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 12:04:00 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Could the info on the number of inquiries from credit.com be wrong? Anyone had any such experience?

It's possible for any service to have data issues but generally people seem to not have problems with them. There's no way to confirm any given situation without pulling the reports directly from the source (each CRA) to compare.

@Anonymous wrote:
What do people think about CCT?

It's a popular service and there are many existing threads on it. Don't overlook them as resources. Here's a simple site restricted Google search. Feel free to tweak the keywords and use date filtering as desired.

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=credit%20check%20total%20site%3Aficoforums.myfico.com

@Anonymous wrote:
So I'd have to call in to cancel? That's not convenient,

It's really no big deal.

Re: credit.com and CCT

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 18:52:19 GMT

You write:

"I know I can also get one free CR from each bureau, which I might do, but I want something more immediate for now."

Getting your annual free credit report can be done immediately. Go to annualCreditReport.com and put in your info and you will instantly have the report.

Depending on the state you live in, you can get additional free credit reports.

Re: credit.com and CCT

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 01:12:02 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
You write:

"I know I can also get one free CR from each bureau, which I might do, but I want something more immediate for now."

Getting your annual free credit report can be done immediately. Go to annualCreditReport.com and put in your info and you will instantly have the report.

Depending on the state you live in, you can get additional free credit reports.

Thanks for the heads-up. I thought they would have to mail a hard copy, I mixed it up with ChexSystems.

Re: credit.com and CCT

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 01:48:38 GMT

No problem. Here are some states where you can get more than just one free report:

http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/7-states-where-residents-get-extra-free-credit-report-1282.php

I will be getting my ChexSystem report in the mail this week.

Re: credit.com and CCT

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 01:53:15 GMT

Anyway, I signed up for CCT and seems pretty solid. I got all 3 CRs and scores immediately, I thought I might had to wait for the scores, but no. Now that I can see my EX report, one of the HP came from the rental agency indeed, but the other two were much older. This is where the info from credit.com becomes confusing. It says: recent: last 6 mo, older: last 12 mo. However, the two older ones are more than 12 months old. The only way credit.com is correct is if the "recent" and "older" refer to the same HP from last month, as if they take into account only inquiries within the last year. They still show a total of 3 inquiries, though (which is correct). Something is off...

Re: credit.com and CCT

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 02:39:34 GMT

Interesting!

It sounds like both sources are reporting 3 inquiries. The puzzle is that the CC summary page implies that it only shows inquiries from the last 12 months, but you can see from the CCT supplied report that two of the three inquiries are over 12 months old.

My guess is that CC's summary page is messed up. The data aren't messed up. It's the wording surrounding it, their way of categorizing it, which leads a reader to believe that CC's credit score only looks at inquiries from the last 12 months.

CC uses Vantage Score, and in the VS model it counts all inquiries up to 24 months old. So my guess is that the CC back end is correctly counting all three of your inquiries, but the wording on the summary page is misleading you to think they are all < 12 months old.

That's my guess. The only other possibility would be that your two older inquiries are right on the cusp of 12/13 months, and are being categorized as 12 months or less when they are actually like 12.6 months or something.

I think you should write CC, explain exactly what you are seeing )on both their summary page and your full experian report) and then ask them if they are sure their Vantage based system doesn't count inquiries through 24 months. Here is their contact page:

https://www.credit.com/contact/

PS. Just so you are clear yourself, FICO's models do not count inquiries older than 12 months. Vantage Score does.

Re: credit.com and CCT

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 07:09:38 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Interesting!

It sounds like both sources are reporting 3 inquiries. The puzzle is that the CC summary page implies that it only shows inquiries from the last 12 months, but you can see from the CCT supplied report that two of the three inquiries are over 12 months old.

My guess is that CC's summary page is messed up. The data aren't messed up. It's the wording surrounding it, their way of categorizing it, which leads a reader to believe that CC's credit score only looks at inquiries from the last 12 months.

CC uses Vantage Score, and in the VS model it counts all inquiries up to 24 months old. So my guess is that the CC back end is correctly counting all three of your inquiries, but the wording on the summary page is misleading you to think they are all < 12 months old.

That's my guess. The only other possibility would be that your two older inquiries are right on the cusp of 12/13 months, and are being categorized as 12 months or less when they are actually like 12.6 months or something.

I think you should write CC, explain exactly what you are seeing )on both their summary page and your full experian report) and then ask them if they are sure their Vantage based system doesn't count inquiries through 24 months. Here is their contact page:

https://www.credit.com/contact/

PS. Just so you are clear yourself, FICO's models do not count inquiries older than 12 months. Vantage Score does.

Well I don't really care about accuracy of VS, although I don't think there's anything wrong with that. The only thing that seems to be wrong is what they label "older" under Inquiries. What is that supposed to mean, it's not even correct English. Older than what? Do they mean "oldest"? But then again oldest in reference to what? It'd be reasonable to assume it should be the oldest that shows in my CR, which weren't accurate in my case. Btw, the second oldest is about 15 months old, not that close to 12 at all, the third one about 20. Anyway, I might contact them to ask what that "older" is supposed to mean.

Re: credit.com and CCT

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 07:12:01 GMT

@takeshi74 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
Could the info on the number of inquiries from credit.com be wrong? Anyone had any such experience?

It's possible for any service to have data issues but generally people seem to not have problems with them. There's no way to confirm any given situation without pulling the reports directly from the source (each CRA) to compare.

@Anonymous wrote:
What do people think about CCT?
It's a popular service and there are many existing threads on it. Don't overlook them as resources. Here's a simple site restricted Google search. Feel free to tweak the keywords and use date filtering as desired.
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=credit%20check%20total%20site%3Aficoforums.myfico.com

@Anonymous wrote:
So I'd have to call in to cancel? That's not convenient,
It's really no big deal.

Thanks for the help. A bit irrelevant, but can you tell me how to do this multiple quote thing, I haven't been able to figure it out.

Re: credit.com and CCT

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 13:56:22 GMT

You got me curious, so I signed onto my own credit.com page. (It's been a while, so I couldn't remember what the interface looked like, especially the inquiry summary.) Here is what mine showed, after I clicked on the CREDIT INQUIRIES tab:

Total Inquiries:

Recent (last six months):

Older (last 12 months)

Latest Inquiry: 01/2016

That seems to be pretty straightforward. I have 6 hard inquiries total on my current Experian report. 1 of those was in the last six months. 4 were in the last 12 months. By implication, 2 of them must be > 12 months.

My guess is that if I were to pull my EX crredit report from ACR.com, it would show six inquiries total, with 1 in the last six months and 4 in the last 12 months.

What exactly are you seeing? (Bear in mind that ideally you want to compare the CC summary and the full report based on data pulled on the same day.)

Re: credit.com and CCT

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 17:07:53 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
You got me curious, so I signed onto my own credit.com page. (It's been a while, so I couldn't remember what the interface looked like, especially the inquiry summary.) Here is what mine showed, after I clicked on the CREDIT INQUIRIES tab:

Total Inquiries:
6

Recent (last six months):
1

Older (last 12 months)
4

Latest Inquiry: 01/2016

That seems to be pretty straightforward. I have 6 hard inquiries total on my current Experian report. 1 of those was in the last six months. 4 were in the last 12 months. By implication, 2 of them must be > 12 months.

My guess is that if I were to pull my EX crredit report from ACR.com, it would show six inquiries total, with 1 in the last six months and 4 in the last 12 months.

What exactly are you seeing? (Bear in mind that ideally you want to compare the CC summary and the full report based on data pulled on the same day.)

Well I guess this explains it. They show the number of total inquiries (straightforward), the number of inquiries in last 6 months (labeled "recent"), the number of inquiries in the last 12 months (labeled "older") and the latest inuiry (also straightforward). It was the "recent" and "older" labels that threw me off, as I didn't know exactly what they were supposed to mean, but now it makes sense now.