I skimmed this article in the magazine's printed issue while shopping at Walgreens. On the website it's behind a paywall for subscribers only. Pretty good overview of things regulars here already know:
Many places where you can purchase your credit report sell FAKOs and one must read the fine print with close attention to realize these are FAKOs
You cannot get real EX FICOs
If you get real FICOs they should be close to what the lender pulls, but they might be using a different version
The new law requiring lenders to disclose which score they used to make a decision is a step in the right direction, but there is no way to learn what score a lender will see BEFORE you apply
The better your score, the more impact one negative item will have
There is a lot of deceptive marketing in the credit scoring world, but don't expect the mess to be fixed by improved regulations any time soon.
TU 791 02/11/2013, EQ 800 1/29/2011 , EX Plus FAKO 812, EX Vantage Score 955 3/19/2010 wife's EQ 9/23/2009 803
EX always was my highest when we could pull all three
Always remember: big print giveth, small print taketh away
If you dunno what tanstaafl means you must Google it
