topic Re: Credit Karma sucks!!! in General Credit Topics

Credit Karma sucks!!!

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 15:19:46 GMT

I knew that CK wasn't going to be dead on accurate with my real fico score but a ballpark figure possibly. It updated today and has me at 695. I went to get a small couple thousand loan and when my credit union ran my stuff my fico score was 637. Why does CK even exist if there is going to be a 60 point swing??? What good is it? I was thinking maybe 10-15 point difference but 60? Pointless for them to even exist.

Re: Credit Karma sucks!!!

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 15:46:09 GMT

Glad you have discovered that when you apply for credit, whatever scoring model you have been looking at might not be the one that the lender uses -- and indeed that it could be off by a lot. That can happen within FICO models too -- you could be looking at one FICO score and then find out that the lender used a different FICO model, or drew his data on a different CRA, and you end up with a huge difference, possibly resulting in a denial of the application.

Karma can be used in some very powerful ways that can benefit you. Let us know if you want to hear more about what those might be.

Let us know too if you'd like to know some strategies for how to better prepare for a loan or CC app. We can suggest those as well.

Good to see that you are on the Forums!

Re: Credit Karma sucks!!!

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 16:00:34 GMT

Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate it. I do understand and have heard about the different scoring models out there etc but I figured CK would be off some. The 60 points is mindblowing and I'm not sure what use they are but if there are some powerful ways to use CK I'd like to hear about them if you don't mind.

Re: Credit Karma sucks!!!

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 16:02:05 GMT

My CK score is over 100 points higher than my FICO score. Totally useless for me for credit-worthiness purposes but CK is a great monitoring tool. WalletHub is the fastest when it comes to inquiry reporting, though.

Re: Credit Karma sucks!!!

itspnutbutterkellytime — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 18:04:46 GMT

Credit Karma uses a Vantage score which is a completely different scoring model than FICO. I only use CK to monitor the things on my reports; I ignore the scores completely. Very few lenders, if any, use the Vantage score.

Re: Credit Karma sucks!!!

Shogun — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 18:09:42 GMT

@itspnutbutterkellytime wrote:
Credit Karma uses a Vantage score which is a completely different scoring model than FICO. I only use CK to monitor the things on my reports; I ignore the scores completely. Very few lenders, if any, use the Vantage score.

I really like this answer!

Re: Credit Karma sucks!!!

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 18:17:02 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate it. I do understand and have heard about the different scoring models out there etc but I figured CK would be off some. The 60 points is mindblowing and I'm not sure what use they are but if there are some powerful ways to use CK I'd like to hear about them if you don't mind.

Sure! The first and best way to use Karma is as a one-stop shop for obtaining your EQ and TU reports. Reports (as distinguished from scores) are so important. They help you find out when CC balances have updated and tons of other stuff. Karma is also nice for assessing basic stats like CC utilization. But ignore what Karma's front end summary page says about AAoA (Average Age of Accounts).

A really sweet thing about reports at Karma is that fresh versions are available as often as once a week. That's a big advantage over a credit monitoring product like myFICO Ultimate, where you can only see your reports once every 90 days.

Another nice use for Karma is as a way of tracking your Vantage scores over time. In this sense, you are not using the score to figure out "what will my lender pull when I plan for loan X next week?" Even if the scores were FICO 8 Classic scores the score your lender pulls could be very different. (Happy to give you a lot of examples of how that can and does happen.)

Rather, you are in this sense tracking the Vantage scores against themselves over time -- to see whether your general credit profile is gradually improving. That can be useful to anyone who wants to see if things are generally getting better, as his derogs fall off, as his accounts get older, as his CC utilization is paid down, etc.

Finally Karma is the only place where you can obtain and track for free a credit score used by the auto insurance and home insurance industry. This is NOT the Vantage score that you see at Karma, nor does the industry generally use FICO. Being able to look at this score can be valuable as you assess how you look to insurers. Just bear in mind that its ranges are very different. An 831 score is amazingly good at FICO and at Vantage, but it is a mediocre to bad score as an Auto Insurance score.

Re: Credit Karma sucks!!!

DaveInAZ — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 21:14:27 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Finally Karma is the only place where you can obtain and track for free a credit score used by the auto insurance and home insurance industry. This is NOT the Vantage score that you see at Karma, nor does the industry generally use FICO. Being able to look at this score can be valuable as you assess how you look to insurers. Just bear in mind that its ranges are very different. An 831 score is amazingly good at FICO and at Vantage, but it is a mediocre to bad score as an Auto Insurance score.

Where do you find your insurance score on CK? I remember I used to see that, but havene't seen it in a long time.

Re: Credit Karma sucks!!!

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 21:23:52 GMT

I just googled Credit Karma Auto Insurance score and got it:

https://www.creditkarma.com/myfinances/scores/insurance

Google knows everything.

Re: Credit Karma sucks!!!

dmFICO8 — Thu, 01 Jun 2017 23:16:50 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
I just googled Credit Karma Auto Insurance score and got it:

https://www.creditkarma.com/myfinances/scores/insurance

Google knows everything.

Using your link, I am not only to see my Auto Insurance score, I am able to get back to my old interface, but if I click Overview, it will refresh to new interface, I gonna bookmark this link to get back to old interface for now. https://www.creditkarma.com/myfinances/creditreport/summary

Re: Credit Karma sucks!!!

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Jun 2017 04:31:03 GMT

When I got the Alliant share secured loan and paid it down to less than 10% my FICO 8 scores went up 20 (dirty reports) to 30 points (clean report) meanwhile my VantageScore 3 went down 5-10 points.

Recently I let a 40% balance report on a card with a low limit and my VantageScore went down 20 points but FICO 8 only went down about 5 points.

I'm also not aware of any bank that uses Vantagescore to make credit decisions.

Re: Credit Karma sucks!!!

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Jun 2017 13:13:04 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:

I'm also not aware of any bank that uses Vantagescore to make credit decisions.

That's because there are none and you will never get a denial based on Vantage Score. I know Amex can deny specifically for FICO score (I've gotten that denial before) and another creditor once listed my denial reason as "FICO score too low" but you will never see a Vantage Score denial -- not from a credit card, not from an insurer, not from a landlord, not from anyone.

Vantage Score markets themselves as "providing billions of credit scores annually" but the only people they provide credit scores to are on free credit monitoring sites like CK. No one pays more than pennies for a VS pull, versus what can be dollars for a FICO pull.

Re: Credit Karma sucks!!!

Revelate — Fri, 02 Jun 2017 19:46:30 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
When I got the Alliant share secured loan and paid it down to less than 10% my FICO 8 scores went up 20 (dirty reports) to 30 points (clean report) meanwhile my VantageScore 3 went down 5-10 points.

Recently I let a 40% balance report on a card with a low limit and my VantageScore went down 20 points but FICO 8 only went down about 5 points.

I'm also not aware of any bank that uses Vantagescore to make credit decisions.

Yeah unlike FICO (as near as I can tell excluding NextGen) Vantage appears to distinguish different installment loan types; I got a huge boost when my mortgage reported on VS, 740 to 780 style and that was with baby loans at pretty utilization ratios on it.

Re: Credit Karma sucks!!!

Anonymous — Sat, 03 Jun 2017 04:11:16 GMT

Theyre telling me my TU is at 650 and I just had it pulled at over 700.....go figure.

Re: Credit Karma sucks!!!

pipeguy — Sat, 03 Jun 2017 06:05:09 GMT

If the thread title said Credit Karma Scores Suck I'd agree, my FICO 8 and 9 scores are high 700's to just over 800 depending on the time of the month and a few other factors very good to excellent yet CK scores are 100+ points less across the board. That said the service/system is free and the reporting and tracking is just fine. Does it annoy me to see my CK scores in the 670's when it fact they are in the 760's to 780's ? Yeah a little, but if another scoring service was giving me straight 840's using their model, it's still useless.

Truth in advertising I check CK every week but ignore the scores other than for laughs.

edit/add: Cap-1's CreditWise is just as useless and its based on Vantage Scores too - if they were worthwhile, way does Cap-1 triple pull all three CRA's for app's?

Re: Credit Karma sucks!!!

elim — Sat, 03 Jun 2017 06:12:05 GMT

@Shogun wrote:
@itspnutbutterkellytime wrote:
Credit Karma uses a Vantage score which is a completely different scoring model than FICO. I only use CK to monitor the things on my reports; I ignore the scores completely. Very few lenders, if any, use the Vantage score.
I really like this answer!

My small Credit Union used V3 TU when I opened a SSL a couple years ago (and I assume they still do).

Re: Credit Karma sucks!!!

Anonymous — Sat, 03 Jun 2017 16:19:58 GMT

I only use ck for monitoring purposes. The score is useless even though transunion sells the score to you. But lenders uses fico score.