BoA FICO or not?

[Anonymous]

They might mean on existing customers. If you have a certain useage rate and utility rate on your card they may call you a 760 internally due to your payment history with them even if you are a 740 on FICO bureau scores.

A company can do whatever they want to a FICO score if they purchase it, they just can't resell it or steal the "formula" for it or market their hybrid as a FICO score. It implies that they would have to know the formula fairly well to know how to tinker with it to increase its ability to predict good vs bad credit risk though.

[Junejer]

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debtisgood wrote:

They might mean on existing customers. If you have a certain useage rate and utility rate on your card they may call you a 760 internally due to your payment history with them even if you are a 740 on FICO bureau scores.

A company can do whatever they want to a FICO score if they purchase it, they just can't resell it or steal the "formula" for it or market their hybrid as a FICO score. It implies that they would have to know the formula fairly well to know how to tinker with it to increase its ability to predict good vs bad credit risk though.

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Sounds to me like they are marketing it as a FICO score. If they are not doing so, then they need to let their CSRs in on the secret.

[Anonymous]

Well they marketed it as FICO to me.

I had to wait a couple of days for them to show the account in their system before I could cancel.  The csr rep gives her song and dance about how I should keep the service, it being free for 30 days and all, at least until I get a copy of my reports.  She says she can see that I have a 597, 602 and 605 so I may want to check them for inaccuracies.  After she finishes her speech I told her that I was aware of exactly what is in my reports because I have a monitoring service and that the reason I was cancelling was because they told me the scores were FICO but I have since found out that they are not.  Yet AGAIN I was told that the scores are FICO, but they were sorry to see me cancel, blah, blah, blah... I am so over this

[Anonymous]

I agree with both of you. I was just speculating on their tweaking of the score for internal models.

I think they could face a lawsuit if they are marketing it that way systematically.

There may be an opportunity for a forum member to start a consulting company and sell their consulting to BoA to educate their CSR's as to what FICO scores are and what intellectual property is.

[QueenBean]

Well, silly me - I just got this phone pitch this morning.  I also specifically asked her if these were genuine FICO scores, or internally generated BoA scores.....she insisted that they were genuine FICO scores from the 3 Bureaus.

guess I'll be cancelling next week. 

[Anonymous]

Big let down isn't it!  Something should really be done about this...

[hopeagain]

I've been using privacy assist for over a year now. After finding this site I called  Privacy Assist and asked if they were true fico scores & the rep said no. They were Credit Scores. When I got my quarterly scores from BoA I pulled my FICO scores.

Here is how they compared:

!/8/09 

Equifax:  faco 704  FICO 714

Experian Faco 776 FICO 808

T U         Faco 748 FICO 761

I will still use privicay assist to monitor but I will also use FICO when I want the scores.