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Which scores are more accurate?

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Longdistancerunner
New Member

Which scores are more accurate?

Greetings,

Happy holidays to all of you.

This question might have been brought up before. If so, I apologize in advance for a possible double post.

 

Could you give me some insight on which scores are more accurate?

 

I made a report check today on myself to see where I stand through several sources and I came up with these numbers:

 

FreeCreditReport.com:

Exp: 746 TU: 750 Equifax: 743

 

CreditKarma:

TU: 720  grade: B

Vantage score (no idea what this is): 880

 

Myfico.com:

Equifax: 791

TU: havent checked

 

So, these numbers are pretty much all over the place. Which one(s) do I take base for a realistic score?

 

Any and all help would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Message 1 of 10
9 REPLIES 9
pizzadude
Credit Mentor

Re: Which scores are more accurate?

Welcome to the forums ! Your FICO® score is the one that matters. Others are referred to as FAKO scores, because they are not used by lenders, and generally have scoring rules that are different than FICO®.
March2010 FICO® ~ 695 TU, 653 EQ, 697 EX
Message 2 of 10
Longdistancerunner
New Member

Re: Which scores are more accurate?

Thank you for the info pizzadude. I was thinking about cancelling my subscription at free cedi treport.com. Since, i get the same service here and I can monitor the score that matters more here, I think I will go ahead and do that.

 

Message 3 of 10
Shogun
Moderator Emeritus

Re: Which scores are more accurate?

+1  Nobody uses the scores you obtain from freecreditreport.com.

Starting Score: 504
July 2013 score:
EQ FICO 819, TU08 778, EX "806 lender pull 07/26/2013
Goal Score: All Scores 760+, Newest goal 800+
Take the myFICO Fitness Challenge

Current scores after adding $81K in CLs and 2 new cars since July 2013
EQ:809 TU 777 EX 790 Now it's just garden time!

June 2017 update: All scores over 820, just pure gardening now.
Message 4 of 10
GregB
Valued Contributor

Re: Which scores are more accurate?

Scorewatch or a EQ FICO from here will give you the only really useful score available to the general public. However, as a monitoring service, Scorewatch is poor. It really depends on what you want.

 

If your EQ FICO is 791 and the information on your other reports is similar to EQ, then you don't really need to worry about your score. Anything above a EQ FICO 760 is irrelevant. You will be better served by a service that lets you monitor the INFORMATION on all three reports.

Message 5 of 10
HiLine
Blogger

Re: Which scores are more accurate?


@GregB wrote:

Scorewatch or a EQ FICO from here will give you the only really useful score available to the general public. However, as a monitoring service, Scorewatch is poor. 


Scorewatch has a lot of alert triggers, more than any other monitoring service I have experience. So far their alerts have had a high on-time percentage for me. 

Message 6 of 10
Longdistancerunner
New Member

Re: Which scores are more accurate?

Thank you all for the insight.

Message 7 of 10
rebroker212
Established Member

Re: Which scores are more accurate?

WhyWhy would consider score watch poor as a monitoring  service? They report on every change to your report

Message 8 of 10
Walt_K
Senior Contributor

Re: Which scores are more accurate?


@rebroker212 wrote:

WhyWhy would consider score watch poor as a monitoring  service? They report on every change to your report


It's limited to EQ, and you don't actually get to see your report.  You're just alerted of a change if it meets one of the triggering criteria.  You won't see every change, though you would see most major changes.

 

Scorewatch is good if you're interested in keeping track of your EQ score, but if you're not so interested in the score but want to know what is on your reports, there are better priced options that will allow you to actually see the information on all three reports.  My favorite is eliminateidtheft.com.  For $180/year my wife and I get to pull each report daily.  So $7.50/month/person.  A lot of people like USAA's credit monitoring service as well. 


Starting Score: ~500 (12/01/2008)
Current Score: EQ 681 (04/05/13); TU 98 728 (01/06/12), TU 08? 760 (provided by Barclay 1/2/14), TU 04 728 (lender pull 01/12/12); EX 742 (lender pull 01/12/12)
Goal Score: 720


Take the FICO Fitness Challenge
Message 9 of 10
GregB
Valued Contributor

Re: Which scores are more accurate?


@rebroker212 wrote:

WhyWhy would consider score watch poor as a monitoring  service? They report on every change to your report


No, they don't. They only report on the changes that meet their triggers. Balance decreases are not reported, which is about 15-20 of the 20-25 changes that I have each month. Mortgage, HELOC, car is always down and I have more CCs that report less than more each month.  

For about the same money, there are products that let you monitor the information on all three CRAs. Just ignore the scores. For less money, there are several products that only monitor EX and EX is so much faster to update that there is no comparison. EX updates in hours, whereas EQ and TU take at least a day longer and usually 2-4.

 

What Scorewatch gives you is some monitoring along with the only really useful credit score that is available to anyone. Scorewatch combined with EX monitoring and TU free updates via CreditKarma worked fine for me.

 

 

Message 10 of 10
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