FICO 8 vs FICO 2 - total scam!!

[Anonymous]

So I don't know how I managed to take out 3 mortgages (not at the same time), countless student and other loans and credit cards thorughout my life and never lean it until today ... but as it turned out the headline FICO score they show you is NOT the score the lenders actually use. Nobody gives a **bleep** about their new and improved FICO 8. I checked my FICO score and it was 754. So far so good. Going to the dealership to buy a new car... they pull credit ... 632. **bleep**???? A phone call later, turns out the dealership is pulling FICO 2. And my FICO 2 is indeed 632. So .... first, I am mad as a fury because it was an embarassing experience. Second, this is a total scam to show us this "feel good" score which is COMPLETELY USELESS for mortgages, cars anything really. I mean who is even using it, like the actual lenders?? Third, how is my FICO 2 over 100 points below FICO 8? How is this even legal / allowed for them to be doing this and mislead people like that??MOD CUT - NOT HERE. Lastly, multiple phone calls to myfico, experian, etc.... there's NO WAY to simulate the FICO 2 score. At all. Because, and I quote, "this is an old score and we are transitioning to FICO 8 now". Well, to effing bad you forgot to tell my mortgage and auto lender to transition to it!! Hate those people. 

[CreditInspired]

Whew! You are definitely raging mad. I cant answer how you managed not to know this; but it's definitely nothing new.

There are several models/versions of FICO scores, and as you learned--one for credit cards, one for auto financing, and one for morrgages. These different FICO models have been around for years. Here is a link for more info

https://www.myfico.com/credit-education/credit-scores/fico-score-versions

[Anonymous]

Those various FICO scores weigh aspects of your profile differently. The auto score puts heavier emphasis on your performance on auto loans, for example. Due to the dollar values and length of the loan, mortgage scores respond very strongly to owed balances, number of debts, and open chargeoffs/collections. They're tailored to the kind of lending that the lenders who use them care about.

[Anonymous]

So, if I don't have an auto loan i can't have a good FICO 2 score for the auto loan? How insane is that? I have 129K in credit limit and my credit utilization was 25%. I just paid it off like 18K of it and so now it would be around 11%. I will do off-cycle update on Monday to see what happens. Their dumb simulations of FICO 8 then bring my credit score to 800 give or take. How should I know if this will help bring FICO 2 to 740+? This is nuts. What else would they want me do? I have 2 conforming mortgages and an fairly smalle installment loan of about 11k and I have not once in my life missed any payments or was late. 

[Ficoproblems247]

In your particular situation, it sounds like it might be most prudent for you to wait until all of the accounts you just paid down have reported to the bureaus, and at that point pull a detailed report including all of your different scores. If nothing else, at least at that point you will be "in the know" for not only just your FICO 8s, but all of the rest of them as well so you do not get blindsided again. My different FICO scores vary wildly sometimes just by how many cards I let report a balance even if there are no other changes to my report. The different bureaus and versions all respond differently to specific scenarios, and to your individual profile specifically. Sometimes you just have to experiment with your own accounts to see how your scores will respond to different situations. I'm sorry for your frustration, but it is not a scam, albeit certainly hard to understand at times. 

[Revelate]

EX FICO 2 is more sensitive both to revolving utilization and revolvers with balances, paying down revolving debt in my experience helps more there.

Ruthlessly optimizing they probably won't be that far off, i.e. my EX FICO 8 is 814 and my EX FICO 2 is 800 flat as of today with AZEO and that one revolver reporting $1037/$25000 for reference.  Admittedly I have a dumb number of accounts, but generally speaking if you have a good EX FICO 8 you'll usually have a pretty EX FICO 2 assuming clean files.  

There's some other differences to be sure, but for mortgages you virtually always get EX FICO 2, some credit unions you'll see EX FICO 2 as well... but EX FICO 8 is the dominant score for credit cards and usually auto loans too though that's usually the auto-enhanced industry option of EX FICO 8.

At some level I agree in the sense that I'm pretty sure I can get an auto loan regardless of how my bad credit is (it might not be a pretty APR to be sure but I can get one), same applies to credit cards albeit at some loss of reward potential... but without a solid EX FICO 2 and more generally the mortgage trifecta of scores as a whole, when I really do need a loan namely for a mortgage, it's harder and much more expensive to get one.