Think i can get Amex Clear?

[haulingthescoreup]

Ooooh, I like those scores, want to see those on my report soon! (currently TU 701 - EX 698 - EQ 673.)

It varies for different people, but I have seen a pretty consistent pattern where EQ penalizes for late payments, especially within the last two years, or on multiple accounts. Those are literally the only baddies that I have, and I have almost a 30-point gap between EQ and TU. (It has actually been worse than that.) My reports are almost identical.

Each CRA has a slightly different preference for what they think is important --it also seems that TU wants mortgages and fewer than half of your accounts with balances, and EX hates inquiries. My three adult kids allowed me to pull their reports, which are really straightforward, and they still all had different scores across the different bureaus. Each CRA has paid for a different formula, reflecting individual preferences, and so each will wind up with different scores.

[Anonymous]

but the thing is i dont have any baddies... heres a pic of one of my credit card payment history notice how the EQ shows white for all the months which means Unknown... idk why it shows that though

Message Edited by bman69 on 12-14-2007 11:04 PM

[haulingthescoreup]

That's a display thing with TC, don't worry about it --everyone's EQ looks that way on TC. It might be because EQ doesn't report the exact date of updates, just mm/yyyy, which they also do on their own reports.

Although that's probably completely unrelated. (We spend a lot of time around here analyzing completely meaningless stuff! )

[Anonymous]

lol well thanks for the help i really want to get my EQ above 700 it would make me feel good, i'm glad i started learning about this credit stuff young i'm only 20

[haulingthescoreup]

You're making a great start. Just about everyone here has moaned "If only I knew all this when I was young," including 26-year-olds!

When scores are that different, there is usually something showing differently on that one report --more inquiries, an extra account, etc., so be sure to compare the accounts list. The easier way is to hit "view printable version" and print out all three and just lay them out, side by side.

Another thing to look at are the positives and negatives listed by each bureau on your three FICO scores (screen 2.) EX doesn't fully participate, so you don't get the positives, but if there's something mentioned on EQ that isn't on the others, or if there is a positive on TU that isn't on EQ, that might be it.

Finally, and this is really moving into magic 8-ball territory, you can look at the "Simulate best action" on the final screen of both EQ and TU, and see if EQ recommends something different. (Again, EX doesn't fully play, so they don't have the sim.) The score projections are definitely not gospel, but the sims are fun to play with. A lot of people buy their FICO's and never really dig into the report itself. By the way, if the sim says to pay down your balances 90% - 100% over the next 24 months, what they seem to be trying to say is to each month keep your balances at 1-9% of each card's credit limit. That confuses everyone who sees that!