@Anonymous wrote:
Hi all
4 months out of my BK7, I managed to get a Discover IT secured (did not burn them). I'm becoming far more serious about my credit and rebuilding it... I'm learning so much I never knew or was taught. Many thanks to the folks in this forum and others.
As I plod through this rebuilding process, I've started using all those sites/apps to keep tabs on my score, and because I've become somewhat obsessed, I decided to get Experian's program ($19.99/mo, daily Exp score, monthly EQ and TU) and use that as a recurring charge on that new Discover card and PIF each month.
But, it occurred to me after reading various places about being wary of FAKO scores, because they are not those used by banks and lenders, due to the Vantage score method used in their calculation, that why don't those companies use the REAL scores? Why would literally each one -- Nerdwallet, Credit Karma etc etc use FAKO scores and not real ones? It is suggested on these boards that we use them to guide or track our progress, but those sites do not actually claim that. In fact, it often seems like they think these are the real scores we should know. And they are consistent too: my TU score is the same across all of them.
Just wondering what your thoughts were about this...
Thank you and thanks for this great space to talk about rebuilding
My two cents:
It's only a matter of time before the VS (aka "FAKO") scores get traction and start to become meaningful. The problem today is FiCO has largely monopolized the scoring market, which enables them to basically extort their exhorbitant fees for their service from lenders.
VS was created by a few lenders in direct response to this problem, and while it gained traction with the credit monitoring sites due to its free nature, getting lenders to change policies is a much slower process.
To be clear, lenders aren't not moving to VS because it's somehow inferior or wrong; it does weight some stuff differently so it can produce a different score from FiCO, but it's still a decent gauge of things. The outrage you hear around here is mostly around this difference, since they want to know what score they're being judged against, not a different model. It's like wanting to know what the questions on the test are going to be rather than trying to improve your actual knowledge on the subject, asking for a practice test, and getting one with questions different than what's on the actual test. Instead, I believe that lenders don't adjust to anything as sweeping as overhauling their approval processes overnight, or even overyear. It will happen eventually, and people are starting to report auto dealerships and few other small to medium financial institutions using VS to assess creditworthiness.
The number of people who actually have excellent VS scores and poor FiCO scores are very, very few. The tension seems to be with borderline cases where every 5-10 points matter for them. In my case, my VS scores are about 50 points higher than my FiCO scores, but it's not really making a difference in my acceptance so I'm fine. I've also attributed that difference to the fact that VS has no memory of my 6-7 year old lates while FiCO does. When they fall off in 2 months, I may well see my FiCO go up to nearly match my VS score as well.
