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FICO vs. FAKO – Share your FAKO stories

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Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: FICO vs. FAKO – Share your FAKO stories

Credit Karma shows me as 830 on both bureaus.  American Express shows me at 818 and Barclays shows me 812.

 

I take it both American Express and Barclays are the real scores while Credit Karma is not.  All of them show me as being excellent top tier credit.  Top tier bank lease offerings for automobiles for instance usually say they require certain credit scores which I believe are in the upper 700’s if I recall.  All I do is regularly pay bills in full.  I have credit way above my utilization but even if I used high utilization and paid it in full, it wouldn’t be an issue.

Message 311 of 338
sarge12
Senior Contributor

Re: FICO vs. FAKO – Share your FAKO stories


@sarahkw wrote:

Hopefully I'm in the right place... 

 

I'm working on getting a relatively small line of credit to open a business. My credit reports have recently been cleaned up, my utilization is under 30%, and I have one collection account being disputed - Sprint paid my Verizon contract out, Verizon didn't do - something? - and now I'm in collections for a bill marked as paid. We're working on that and have a lot of documentation to back it up, so hopefully it irons out soon. 

 

MyFico and Experian both report my Fico8 EX as 715. The other two are 701. When the bank pulled my Fico8 from Experian yesterday, it came back at 649. The bank is great and we're working out what we can do, but how frustating. 

 

Really just venting, but I did perhaps wrongly assume the Fico8 from Experian and here would be more accurate than, say, my Capital One monitoring (which I know is TU). 


I strongly suspect the bank pulled an earlier version of fico than the fico 08 you got from experian and here. It was probably the earlier versions used for martgage loans mainly. From experian that would be Fico score 2, and is usually lower than the fico08 score. That could explain the difference...A true Experian Fico 08 score pulled at the same time from here, experian creditscore.com, discover's creditscorecard.com, or your bank would absolutely be identical. I know the EX Fico 08 is what is provided here, creditscore.com, and creditscorecard.com. I am not sure which credit score your bank actually pulled.

TU fico08=812 07/16/23
EX fico08=809 07/16/23
EQ fico09=812 07/16/23
EX fico09=821 07/16/23
EQ fico bankcard08=832 07/16/23
TU Fico Bankcard 08=840 07/16/23
EQ NG1 fico=802 04/17/21
EQ Resilience index score=58 03/09/21
Unknown score from EX=784 used by Cap1 07/10/20
Message 312 of 338
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: FICO vs. FAKO – Share your FAKO stories

I'm so confused? 


  1. @Kelsey_H  
    Former myFICO Employee 
    wrote:

    Genuine FICO Scores are used in over 90% of lending decisions, while other “credit scores” (often referred to as FAKO scores) are rarely or never used by lenders to grant credit.

     

    1. Where did you get your FAKO score?
    2. Which FAKO score did you receive and from which bureau?
    3. Where did you get your genuine FICO® Score?
    4. Which FICO® Score did you receive and from which bureau?
    5. What type of loan/credit were you applying for? (type, rate, terms, etc. are all helpful)
    6. Share your FAKO story (What was your first impression when you received your FAKO score? How did you figure out that it was not a FICO® Score or that it was different than a FICO® Score? How did the FAKO score impact your loan/credit experience? )

    So how do I figure this out? Is Credit Karma not reliable? Should I not even check that score and stay with Experian?
Message 313 of 338
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: FICO vs. FAKO – Share your FAKO stories


@Anonymous wrote:

I'm so confused? 


  1. @Kelsey_H  
    Former myFICO Employee 
    wrote:

    Genuine FICO Scores are used in over 90% of lending decisions, while other “credit scores” (often referred to as FAKO scores) are rarely or never used by lenders to grant credit.

     

    1. Where did you get your FAKO score?
    2. Which FAKO score did you receive and from which bureau?
    3. Where did you get your genuine FICO® Score?
    4. Which FICO® Score did you receive and from which bureau?
    5. What type of loan/credit were you applying for? (type, rate, terms, etc. are all helpful)
    6. Share your FAKO story (What was your first impression when you received your FAKO score? How did you figure out that it was not a FICO® Score or that it was different than a FICO® Score? How did the FAKO score impact your loan/credit experience? )

    So how do I figure this out? Is Credit Karma not reliable? Should I not even check that score and stay with Experian?

I personally think the question of "reliability" versus "unreliability" is a bit overstated sometimes. The reason that you're so often told not to rely on VS 3.0 scores as a definitive guide as to whether you'll be approved for credit is that card and loan issuers generally don't use those scores (from what I understand, however, apartment rental companies did/do use VS 3.0). I personally find Credit Karma and similar services that use VS 3.0 (I like MyBankRate personally for its extensive graphs showing balances, utilization and the like) useful for keeping track of one's overall credit picture; CK shows you extensive data from both your TU and EQ credit reports, which is always helpful, even if the scores they give you aren't the FICO scores that are used by lenders. For what it's worth, in any case, my EQ and EX VS's aren't too far off from my FICO's even though there's a fairly sizable gap of some 30-35 points between TU VS and FICO.

Message 314 of 338
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: FICO vs. FAKO – Share your FAKO stories


@AnonymousIs Credit Karma not reliable? Should I not even check that score and stay with Experian?

Correct.  For scores, you want to concern yourself with just those of the FICO variety.  VS 3.0 scores are very unmeaningful, so there's no much point in looking at them.

Message 315 of 338
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: FICO vs. FAKO – Share your FAKO stories


@Anonymous wrote:

@AnonymousIs Credit Karma not reliable? Should I not even check that score and stay with Experian?

Correct.  For scores, you want to concern yourself with just those of the FICO variety.  VS 3.0 scores are very unmeaningful, so there's no much point in looking at them.


While this may be true, I will encourage you to keep Credit Karma as an allert system to inquiries.  You should have a few options when seeking advice.  I keep a circle:

 

Credit Karma (For Inquiries Alerts and Possible Cards)

Wallet Hub (For Inquiries Alerts...)

Credit Sesame (I'm not sure what I use this for anymore but it was once very useful...)

Amazon FICO alerts with the amazon card

InfoArmor (I'm not keeping this forever because it serves the same purpose as Credit Karma)

Experian (For Experian Scores... It's free so why not?!... I tried the pro version and it's not as good as MyFico)

MyFico (For everything...  It's perfect!)

 

I think I'm missing my Capital One protection but I don't like it.  Anyways, point is to keep an open mind!

 

Love,

 

iMacGuy

Message 316 of 338
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: FICO vs. FAKO – Share your FAKO stories


@Kelsey_H wrote:
  1. Where did you get your FAKO score?
  2. Which FAKO score did you receive and from which bureau?
  3. Where did you get your genuine FICO® Score?
  4. Which FICO® Score did you receive and from which bureau?
  5. What type of loan/credit were you applying for? (type, rate, terms, etc. are all helpful)
  6. Share your FAKO story (What was your first impression when you received your FAKO score? How did you figure out that it was not a FICO® Score or that it was different than a FICO® Score? How did the FAKO score impact your loan/credit experience? )

1. Credit Karma.

2. Vantage 3.0 score from EQ and TU.

3. myFICO.com 3B subscription.

4. All FICO scores, all bureaus.

5. At the time, I wasn't intending on applying for anything in particular. I was interested in cultivating what credit history I had and didn't even know what my scores were. I also wasn't aware of the difference between FAKO and FICO.

6. My FAKO scores were in the "fair" category at 682 EQ and 688 TU. I wasn't exactly thrilled, but happy that the results weren't worse. Based on these scores, I applied for the Amazon Prime Rewards Visa Signature card and was approved. It so happens that card is issued by Chase and they used their own scoring system Acquistion Risk v2 that had me at 616. It was through these forums I realized FICO is the only score that really matters. Upon checking my FICOs, I was surprised to find the difference to be around 20-35 points higher than the FAKOs. Though some people still recommend checking the FAKO apps for monitoring purposes, I find my FAKO trends to be misleading as well. Last month CK reported that my TU score had dropped 11 points, but my FICO TU had actually increased 24 points. So I've pretty much abandoned FAKOs for any purpose.

 

Message 317 of 338
Gonzozap
Frequent Contributor

Re: FICO vs. FAKO – Share your FAKO stories


@Anonymous wrote:

I'm so confused? 


  1. @Kelsey_H  
    Former myFICO Employee 
    wrote:

    So how do I figure this out? Is Credit Karma not reliable? Should I not even check that score and stay with Experian?

No need to rid yourself of anything that's free.  Credit Karma is NOT just about scores.  There is other helpful information, such as alerts.  It is also quite timely.  They were the first to recently alert me that one of my accounts had been closed.

Message 318 of 338
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: FICO vs. FAKO – Share your FAKO stories

I'm in the process of building credit. I have no debt except student loans and one minor debt of $200 remaining balance due to identify theft (working on it).

CK has my FAKO for Ex: 523 TU: 517
FICO is actually: Ex: 460 Tu: 457 Eq: 491

All reports have same info. Nothing is different except scores.

Kind of discouraged now. Been watching my credit go up slowly and it's still so low.

And yes, I was approved for a secured cc through Chase. So I'm building "good" debt. 😒
Message 319 of 338
Anonymous
Not applicable

Re: FICO vs. FAKO – Share your FAKO stories

  1. Where did you get your FAKO score?    
  2. Which FAKO score did you receive and from which bureau?
  3. Where did you get your genuine FICO® Score?
  4. Which FICO® Score did you receive and from which bureau?
  5. What type of loan/credit were you applying for? (type, rate, terms, etc. are all helpful)
  6. Share your FAKO story (What was your first impression when you received your FAKO score? How did you figure out that it was not a FICO® Score or that it was different than a FICO® Score? How did the FAKO score impact your loan/credit experience? )

 

1. Credit Karma

2. VS 3.0 EQ TU

3. MyFico 3B

4. Credit Karma had 692 TU, 675 EQ. MyFico has 612 TU, 621 EQ

5. Pre-qual for personal loan.

6. Didn't know until I got denial letter from personal loan that had much different score. I mean I didn't hard pull so no harm, just annoying.

Message 320 of 338
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