Experian.com

[Anonymous]

How reliable is Experian.com? I just went a large app spree, about 8 in 2 days, and added a sizable car loan. Been watching my Transunion score drop daily as the hits rolled in, and down over 30 points.

This morning, I got an email alert from Experian. Expecting the worst, I headed over to check it out and, low and behold, I'm actually up 22 points to 651! I'm not expecting that number to hold once all the new accounts get added, but it's still nice to be above my current goal score! It added my newest CC with a $2k limit, and my car loan, so the remaining hits are just the store cards.

Any experiences with Experian? 

[Anonymous]

Where are you getting a daily TU score from?

[Anonymous]

Transunion.com

It's not updated quite daily but more every 2 or 3 days, but between CK, Nerdwallet, and a few others, I can always find a one that updated that day. CK is in step with Transunion score.

[Anonymous]

If you just went on the spree, only 1 of the 3 factors that lower your scores has happened thus far, which are the inquiries.  Once the accounts report you'll have a reduction to your AAoA as well as "new accounts" which lower your AoYA to 0.  Depending on your profile, there's a good chance that you'll see your scores drop at least as much as you did from the inquiries alone once all 8 accounts have reported.

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately, TransUnion.com, CK and all the other ones aren't providing you with a FICO score, they're providing you with a completely useless Vantage Score.  As of today and for more than 13 months, I have looked for ONE lender that uses Vantage Score and so far, after probably 1000 inquiries, there are ZERO banks that use Vantage Score.  It's useless compared to FICO.

Keep in mind that Vantage Score penalizes inquiries and new accounts WAY MORE than FICO, and since no one uses VS, you can ignore that score completely.  Only pull FICO scores for credit concerns.

[Anonymous]

So Transunion.com only provides a FAKO score....? Crap

After poking around this section of the forums(usually only read CC apps and Rebuilding, since that's the focus the past few months), it seems CreditCheckTotal is the go to for real FICO 8 scores without costing an arm and a leg? Are there any other recommended sites?

[Anonymous]

Discover offers a free EX FICO08 every month at creditscorecard.com.

CCT is a $1 trial for about a week then you can call the backdoor number to cancel automatically and you get a second pull for free even after canceling.

There are other FICO08 providers -- some credit cards offer one (Discover offers TU FICO08 monthly I believe).

Speaking of which, I am going to add a new tab to my credit helper spreadsheet linked below to list all the FICO08 providers and costs/free.

[Revelate]

Experian is a free FICO 8, it's reference for that score and a good one to be monitoring.  Unfortunately having an account there seems to break both Discover Scorecard (no big there) and CCT which is unfortunate.

That said for free services I'm starting to think it might be best in market now that CK has done something horrific to their UI.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

So Transunion.com only provides a FAKO score....? Crap

After poking around this section of the forums(usually only read CC apps and Rebuilding, since that's the focus the past few months), it seems CreditCheckTotal is the go to for real FICO 8 scores without costing an arm and a leg? Are there any other recommended sites?

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Correct. Transunion uses the Vantage 3 educational score.