Credit Monitoring with FICO scores

[Shadowfactor]

I’m looking for the best way to check my FICO scores. I don’t need all the additional scores. Just FICO 8.

I would like a service that updates as often as possible without a huge cost.

I read on these forums that CCT allows you to keep doing the free trial for $1 over and over again. But the post about that. Was about 2 years old. Is this still working ? If not how do you get the 50% off that I read about ?

My options are:
Amex Credit Monitoring $16.99 monthly 3B pull and scores
CCT list Price of $29.95 monthly 3B pull and scores
Experian Credit Works Premium $24.95 monthly 2B pull and scores. Daily EX score
MyFico -quarterly pull and scores. Read that it’s expensive and lags in updates

Any other options out there that I haven’t seen ?

Thanks for the help!

[Anonymous]

CCT is $14.95 or so for the first year if you call to cancel your free trial, they will offer it for sure.  I use CCT for $14.95 becaues my estate planner actually gives me $20/month in free credit monitoring credit but it has to be a plan that is UNDER $20 a month, so I pay for MyFico at $40/month (monthly 3B) and get the CCT basically free.  I pull one around the 3rd of the month (CCT) and one around the 20th of the month (MyFico).

Your best bet is to get your free FICO 08s from the various lenders that offer them.  See the thread for "Free FICO scores" in my signature.

[Anonymous]

Hi ABCD.  The "Free FICO Scores" thread that you link to was a nice idea by its OP, but that person pretty quickly opted out of the role of updating it (i.e. keeping the post at the very top of the thread updated with the latest info and organized in a highly user-friendly way).  That's the key to a thread like that.

It would be nice if we could find a newcomer or lurker who wants to contribute to the community and who is willing to do some research in advance, put it all together in a nice accessible format and and then maintain it for at least a year or two.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, but at least it's a starting point for folks!  Haven't actually seen a lot of people asking about it lately, but in the past it was a common question that came up again and again.  I kinda wonder if this thread actually gets more visits than people realize.

There are good links on third party sites with a full list of banks that provide a free FICO score of one kind or another but I don't like linking to those sites because they're cluttered with affiliate ads and sometimes give bad advice in order to generate a commission.

I keep a spreadsheet of my own that I update whenever I find a new data point on the web.  Wish someone had a good "credit wiki" actually.  Would be more useful but probably would end up nerfed by ads.

[Anonymous]

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@Shadowfactor wrote:
I’m looking for the best way to check my FICO scores. I don’t need all the additional scores. Just FICO 8.

I would like a service that updates as often as possible without a huge cost.

I read on these forums that CCT allows you to keep doing the free trial for $1 over and over again. But the post about that. Was about 2 years old. Is this still working ? If not how do you get the 50% off that I read about ?

My options are:
Amex Credit Monitoring $16.99 monthly 3B pull and scores
CCT list Price of $29.95 monthly 3B pull and scores
Experian Credit Works Premium $24.95 monthly 2B pull and scores. Daily EX score
MyFico -quarterly pull and scores. Read that it’s expensive and lags in updates

Any other options out there that I haven’t seen ?

Thanks for the help!

---

Hi ShadowFactor.  Can you tell us a bit more about what you are looking for?  The perfect solution would give you daily reports, daily FICO scores, would access all three bureaus, would give you alerts (e.g. for inquiries, new accounts, etc.), would give you some kind of ID-theft protection, would all be at one web site, and would be cost-free.

As you can imagine, there is no perfect solution.  So can you go through the list of stuff I gave you and see which those things you could live without and which you could relax a lot?

For example, is a one-stop shop solution crucial?  If not, you can get far cheaper total solution by leveraging as part of it various kinds of free tools.

Do you need daily scores or is once a month OK?  Same question for reports?  (PS.  Unless you are fervently committed to a one stop shop, I'd serious consider having a free tool like Karma in your back pocket so you can pull TU and EQ as often as once a week.)

Do you want to avoid having to cancel a subscription several times a year?  If so, then the $1 CCT trial will be a rare part of your solution.

By credit monitoring do you mean that "alert" driven approaches that let you know within a day or two of having an inquiry or a new account (say)?  How important is a solution that claims the ability to do ID theft detection?

Tell us more about what you are looking for and then folks can guide you better.  To give you an idea, you can put together a solution that gets you frequent free reports and fairly frequent scores for at most a couple bucks a year.  But you'd have to be ok with multiple tools, occasional cancelling a trial, etc.

[SouthJamaica]

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@Shadowfactor wrote:
I’m looking for the best way to check my FICO scores. I don’t need all the additional scores. Just FICO 8.

I would like a service that updates as often as possible without a huge cost.

I read on these forums that CCT allows you to keep doing the free trial for $1 over and over again. But the post about that. Was about 2 years old. Is this still working ? If not how do you get the 50% off that I read about ?

My options are:
Amex Credit Monitoring $16.99 monthly 3B pull and scores
CCT list Price of $29.95 monthly 3B pull and scores
Experian Credit Works Premium $24.95 monthly 2B pull and scores. Daily EX score
MyFico -quarterly pull and scores. Read that it’s expensive and lags in updates

Any other options out there that I haven’t seen ?

Thanks for the help!

---

Most of the credit monitoring services will give you a 50% price, as a retention offer, if you call to cancel.

This happened to me with experian.com, transunion.com, equifax.com, and credit check total.

So if you sign up for CCT, then call to cancel, they will probably offer you the service at half price.

If you only need 1 bureau's FICO 8, my favorite service is experian.com

If you get the 3 bureau Ultimate service here at MyFICO, in my opinion the 'lag' time on FICO 8 isn't that bad; I have found it be from 0 to 2 days. And of course you get the bonus of a full update on the whole suite of scores once every quarter.

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Yeah, but at least it's a starting point for folks!  Haven't actually seen a lot of people asking about it lately, but in the past it was a common question that came up again and again.  I kinda wonder if this thread actually gets more visits than people realize.

There are good links on third party sites with a full list of banks that provide a free FICO score of one kind or another but I don't like linking to those sites because they're cluttered with affiliate ads and sometimes give bad advice in order to generate a commission.

I keep a spreadsheet of my own that I update whenever I find a new data point on the web.  Wish someone had a good "credit wiki" actually.  Would be more useful but probably would end up nerfed by ads.

---

It looks like the OP who started it promised to do regular updates of it, but then lost interest in it.  The OP posted two times and hasn't been back for the last two months.   That person is pretty active in the forums (I saw posts on other threads in the last few days) so it seems virtually certain that the thread is dead.

I'll ask the OP if he or she plans to do anything more with it.  Otherwise I'll create a new post soliciting any new folks who want a project of their own.  It's a nice way for a person new to the forums or a lurker to get involved and to do something that benefits the community.

[Shadowfactor]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Shadowfactor wrote:
I’m looking for the best way to check my FICO scores. I don’t need all the additional scores. Just FICO 8.

I would like a service that updates as often as possible without a huge cost.

I read on these forums that CCT allows you to keep doing the free trial for $1 over and over again. But the post about that. Was about 2 years old. Is this still working ? If not how do you get the 50% off that I read about ?

My options are:
Amex Credit Monitoring $16.99 monthly 3B pull and scores
CCT list Price of $29.95 monthly 3B pull and scores
Experian Credit Works Premium $24.95 monthly 2B pull and scores. Daily EX score
MyFico -quarterly pull and scores. Read that it’s expensive and lags in updates

Any other options out there that I haven’t seen ?

Thanks for the help!

---

Hi ShadowFactor.  Can you tell us a bit more about what you are looking for?  The perfect solution would give you daily reports, daily FICO scores, would access all three bureaus, would give you alerts (e.g. for inquiries, new accounts, etc.), would give you some kind of ID-theft protection, would all be at one web site, and would be cost-free.

As you can imagine, there is no perfect solution.  So can you go through the list of stuff I gave you and see which those things you could live without and which you could relax a lot?

For example, is a one-stop shop solution crucial?  If not, you can get far cheaper total solution by leveraging as part of it various kinds of free tools.

Do you need daily scores or is once a month OK?  Same question for reports?  (PS.  Unless you are fervently committed to a one stop shop, I'd serious consider having a free tool like Karma in your back pocket so you can pull TU and EQ as often as once a week.)

Do you want to avoid having to cancel a subscription several times a year?  If so, then the $1 CCT trial will be a rare part of your solution.

By credit monitoring do you mean that "alert" driven approaches that let you know within a day or two of having an inquiry or a new account (say)?  How important is a solution that claims the ability to do ID theft detection?

Tell us more about what you are looking for and then folks can guide you better.  To give you an idea, you can put together a solution that gets you frequent free reports and fairly frequent scores for at most a couple bucks a year.  But you'd have to be ok with multiple tools, occasional cancelling a trial, etc.

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I would like to get my FICO scores about once a month and be alerted with new scores and reports if something changes.

I am fine with using multiple services to get them at the best cost and am okay with calling to cancel trials.

I currently have Credit Karma and the Experian Free service and I tried out the Experian CreditWorks Premium. It did what I needed it to, but it was expensive to get every month. I would like to stay under $20 a month, although I'd prefer 15ish.

I get my monthly FICO score through Discover and AMEX. EX & TU so I'm okay with just getting a paid service that provides once a month so I can see them twice during the month.

On a side note. I would like to see the removal dates for collection accounts. I tried to sign up for CCT, but failed the verification part of it since the questions had nothing to do with my credit report. I made a thread about this.

Is there a way to do this via Credit Karma, Experian App, or a paid service ?

I have 2 collection accounts I swore were going to be deleted in Jan 2018. I thought I remembered seeing that on my Experian Report when I got my annual credit report but I could be wrong.

The DofD on them according to my equifax report is Jan 10th 2012. So would they fall off in January 2018 or 2019 ?

Also is there a way to view your credit reports through the agencies if you have the confirmation number of your reports ?

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Hi Shadow.  Have you pulled your reports using AnnualCreditReport.com yet?  They are the gold standard.

I'd work on figuring out what is going wrong with you signing up for CCT.  That sounds like a good fit for you.  It may require getting advice from the reps at CCT and possibly some advice from folks here.  Having a reliable true report (e.g. from ACR) would help you work out what is going wrong in CCT's process.

Assuming you can work out your problem with CCT, a reasonable approach for you might be this:

*  Credit Karma (for EQ and TU reports, and also for alerts for things like inquiries and new accounts and so forth)

* http://creditscore.com/ (for a monthly free EX report and FICO 8 score)

* Any credit cards that give you free FICO scores (you already have a few of these)

*  Occasional $1 pulls at CCT (might be as rare as once every 3-4 months)

Note that if you are a resident of certain states you are entitled to more extra free reports than the one you get from ACR. 

https://www.thebalance.com/how-to-get-a-free-credit-report-from-the-credit-bureaus-960454

[Shadowfactor]

I need to call CCT and figure it out. But when I did it transferred me to Experian. Assuming its the same company. Anyway 45 minute wait and I didnt have time.

I just tried to pull my annual credit reports from all Experian and EQ. Experian says that my online request can not be processed. Probably because I just tried and failed though CCT.

So I tried to do EQ.

Came up with some very funny questions that have nothing to do with my credit report. About Bank cards and auto loans that I never opened.

These had the options for does not apply. So I selected those, but there wasnt a single question that had to do with my actual credit report. I failed that ID check as well and was not allowed to continue.

I made a thread about this issue when it happened with CCT in the General Credit topics forum. It's very strange.

So I decided maybe something was going on and I paid for American Express CreditSecure. It was a dollar for 30 days.

I took a good hard look at it and everything seems to be fine. Nothing on there that hasn't been from me and nothing relating to the funny questions I got from EX and EQ. Going to try to do transunion now.

Any Suggestions about what is going on would be great!

UPDATE:

Tried to do Transunion online. Didnt even ask me the ID questions, Just said I failed it and gave me a number to call to order my reports

I just ordered all 3 reports over the phone through the automated system. It said I would have them in 2-3 weeks.