Plus Score?

[Anonymous]

How close is this to being accurate? I just pulled my experian plus score through AMEX and its at 636

[llecs]

For clarity...this was through Amex CreditSecure, right?

[Anonymous]

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@llecs wrote:

For clarity...this was through Amex CreditSecure, right?

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Yes it was

[llecs]

The score is called a PLUS score and is also offered by all of EX's products like freecreditreport, creditchecktotal, freecreditscore, and so on, and is offered by many CMSs out there like CreditReport.com, USAA's CMS, and others.

IME, my FICO has been as high as approx. 70 points as compared the the PLUS score on the same day, and as low as 40 or so on the back end. I know I can guess within 70 points as to where my FICO is at when pulled the same day for comparison.

[Anonymous]

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@llecs wrote:

The score is called a PLUS score and is also offered by all of EX's products like freecreditreport, creditchecktotal, freecreditscore, and so on, and is offered by many CMSs out there like CreditReport.com, USAA's CMS, and others.

IME, my FICO has been as high as approx. 70 points as compared the the PLUS score on the same day, and as low as 40 or so on the back end. I know I can guess within 70 points as to where my FICO is at when pulled the same day for comparison.

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So that means my real experian score could be in the 500's?

[llecs]

It could be in the 500s, or in the 700s, or somewhere in between, likely. Remember, your PLUS can increase and FICO decrease for the same thing, and vice-versa. With such a large scoring range, it's impossible to correlate a FAKO with a FICO. And I know it is frustrating because Experian is being a goober with FICO.

I was dying to know my EX FICO leading up to mortgage time and the best solace I received was focusing on TU and EQ only in terms of score. If I gave 100% at rebuilding my credit and focused on all 3 reports equally, and if all 3 reports matched with balances, details, stati, etc., then I could walk away knowing my EX FICO was roughly in the same position. Come mortgage time, it was within 10 points of the other two.

[crunching_numbers]

Yes, it is possible. If the information on all of your credit reports is similar (same baddies, all the same accts.), then it might be a better idea to gauge your potential EX score off of where your EQ score is. 

PLUS uses completely different equations to get the numbers, and may not go up when FICO goes up, or go down when FICO goes down.

For reference, in 2008 when we did a refi, for DH:

EQ= 725     EX=736      TU=722

And for me:

EQ=722      EX=723      TU=715

When the reports have the same info, the scores should be somewhat close, and a better predictor of each other than the PLUS score is a predictor.

Edit: sorry I was posting at the same time as the poster above. We are basically saying the same thing.

[GregB]

I've carefully tracked Plus score changes and have found that it moves the same direction as a FICO about 3/4 of the time. On my very clean reports (no negatives), it is generally within 50 points either way.

It is just about completely worthless - except for the money it makes Experian, of course. For a person looking for a score that means something, the disinformation that it provided is far worse than the very, very limited information that it provides.

[Anonymous]

Experian doesn't make money as much as saves money from not using a real credit score which is expensive. Plus score makes no claims that it is anything but a toy if you read the fine print. Was always weird to me that experian and others didn't at least give vantage score, which at least claims to be a real credit score, and is partially owned by experian. But I guess they would still need to pay a tiny bit.