More confusing as to more getting into Credit

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

I am, just like everyone els here doesnt really care about credit score when we were in our early 20s until we realize credit score play big role in our life when it come to buying a car/home or taking big loan out.  That being said lately I been chasing after all my collection and charge off in my credit report, some I paid off and some I did settlement so that way it shown I am responsible when lender pull my credit history. Neverless all my score remain the same, doesnt decrease or increase after those collection had been removed or mark as paid including my fico score remain the same.

Make long story short I want to understand more about how credit score generate from system and how accurate its which score should I believed or go by.  So I have decided to purchase ALL credit report from all 3 credit bureaus including myfico. Yes call my stupid if you like, but I want to see how are those score be so different and why and which one should I believed. The more I look into these score the more confuse I get and I will never understand why we have to pay so much money to see our own score BUT all score are not the same.

Below is a lits from each credit bureaus including fico.  Keep in mind that I am a member in Fico, Transunion, Experian and Equifax and I pull all 3 credit from each Credit Bureau including Credit Karma. Here are the list.

Member off Transunion:  Score:  Trans->614                Equifax->631                    Experian->625

Member off Equifax:        Score:  Trans->699                Equifax->612                    Experian->648

Member off Experian:     Score:  Trans-> 599                Equifax->587                   Experian->583

Member off Fico:            Score:  Tans->580                   Equifax->554                   Experian->608

Credit Karma: Powered by Transunion: 643

Capital One: Tracking Score powered by Transunion: 634

I was a member off Transunion for a long time monitoring my score and I thought my score was bit decent enough for my to apply for a small CC to rebuild my credit and even store card, but after applying for several CC and store Cards, denial after denial it make my wonder why did I get denial, which score are REAL.

I hope this help other members who is still confuse like me and doesnt know what to do.  At this moment I am not doing inquiry to any CC, store card, or even loan Im trying to ignore all these score and focus paying my bills on time each month. 3 months from now I will check my score and how is it different from now and after. 

Please feed your advice and comment about this. Thanks in Advance.

[pizzadude]

The scores you purchased directly from the CRAs are FAKO scores.  If you haven't read through these threads yet take a look:

Credit Scoring 101:

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/fico/board/message?board.id=ficoscoring&thread.id=29793

The Son Of Credit Scoring 101

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Rebuilding-Your-Credit/The-Son-Of-Credit-Scoring-101/m-p/718550#U718...

Also take a look at this link, it explains the different FICO score models which are in use, and where they can be obtained: 

http://ficoforums.myfico.com/t5/Understanding-FICO-Scoring/The-many-flavors-of-FICO-Editions-version...

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply...

Excuse my silly question and concern, Im not just quiet understand yet.

You stated the score I purchased are so called "FAKO" then why people care so much to have they negative/collection/charge off remove from the 3 credit bureaus but NOT with myfico itself? Whe did people dispute item and trying so hard to have these negative account remove from the CRA if it FAKO? OR so called not a real score.  I was told some of the lender doesn't even use Fico score to determine, my local credit union used score straight from Experian and Aquifax themself.

If I have negative item in Myfico where or who do I dispute those items from? From Myfico or those 3 credit bureaus? If I dispute from these 3 credit Bureaus then why we called them FAKO, and where did Myfico get their score from ?

Sorry I am still confusing, can some one please put them it simple way or words so I can understand it better.

Thanks

[Revelate]

myFICO is not the keeper of the data; the three CRA's are the repositories.  myFICO and the rest of the third party implementations get the report data from the CRA's and massage it for presentation to consumers.  Hence all disputes and everything simlar goes through them, and ultimately it's the data which is important.

The report (the data) is what the algorithms are run against to generate a score.  The algorithms are either FICO or not, and we tend to label those non-FICO ones as FAKO here on the forums: most of the scores sold by the bureaus are educational scores, and won't be used by any lender.

The merits of purchasing FICO scores I won't debate, but purchasing a score that doesn't track the same way as FICO, and isn't used by anyone, is throwing money away in my opinion.  There's enough free junk score options available, the only thing that is really useful from the bureaus is the more complete report, of which the bulk of the information is on the third party implementations such as myFICO.

ETA: EQ does sell a FICO '04 (Beacon 5.0) score under their Score Power product - and this is a *very* good score to have available for consumers as it's used to underwrite the near entirety of mortgages currently.

[CreditDunce]

Paying your bills on time is the best way to improve your score.  But only if your bills are being reported to the CRA's.  Do you have any open CC's, loans, etc?   If not, you may need to go the secure credit card / installment loan route.  I would recommend you start in the rebuilding forum reading the stickies, etc for more info.  Be sure to also read up on the best ways to pay old debt and have derogitve information removed from your credit report.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Myfico still are still the same for the last couple of months, it had not been move at all.  I did had collection and charge off items but I had called collection agency and I did some settlement for less and some I paid in full.  My thought was paying off these collection for help to increase my score but I was wrong I guess. 

I have 1 CC open with Captial One CL 1k

I have 1 car loan open now never late, not even once for almost 2 years now

I have secure loan with DCU credit union 1k been paying every month taken from my account

Should I get another secure CC or open another Unsecure card? How would myfico score will increase? I have no way other then paying on time and taken care of my collection which I already did. I dont understand these system.

All those does report in CRA and all my collection has marked paid and some had removed from my report. My score does increase in the CRA but not here in myfico, infact I still have collection and charge off show in myfico, why its still in myfico since it was removed from CRA and marked as paid?

I just update my score in myfico yesterday and the score remain the same.

This is not fair for me, I tried my best to taken care of those collection and paying everything on time for the last couple of years now trying to rebuild my credit but its seem not to work for me.

Is there any reason why myfico score remain so low? how often it update?

[CreditDunce]

---

@Anonymous wrote:

Hi,

Myfico still are still the same for the last couple of months, it had not been move at all.  I did had collection and charge off items but I had called collection agency and I did some settlement for less and some I paid in full.  My thought was paying off these collection for help to increase my score but I was wrong I guess. 

I have 1 CC open with Captial One CL 1k

I have 1 car loan open now never late, not even once for almost 2 years now

I have secure loan with DCU credit union 1k been paying every month taken from my account

Should I get another secure CC or open another Unsecure card? How would myfico score will increase? I have no way other then paying on time and taken care of my collection which I already did. I dont understand these system.

All those does report in CRA and all my collection has marked paid and some had removed from my report. My score does increase in the CRA but not here in myfico, infact I still have collection and charge off show in myfico, why its still in myfico since it was removed from CRA and marked as paid?

I just update my score in myfico yesterday and the score remain the same.

This is not fair for me, I tried my best to taken care of those collection and paying everything on time for the last couple of years now trying to rebuild my credit but its seem not to work for me.

Is there any reason why myfico score remain so low? how often it update?

---

Unfortunately, myfico is providing you the credit score most lenders use (at least for credit card apps).  Most of the scores you can get from the CRA's are FAKO.  No one uses them.   MyFico pulls your score from the CRA.  When you pull it, it is the up to date score.  

Currently FICO doesn't care if a collection is paid off or not.  It counts the same.  In some cases it actually hurts you to pay off the collection because it makes the collection appear to be more current.  For collections you have paid off, be sure to write good will (GW) letters to try to get it off your report.  For any that you haven't paid, try to have the baddy removed when you pay (Pay for Delete aka PFD).   The fewer baddies you have on your CR, the better.  However, you will get the biggest score increase from having the last one removed.  I don't know much about how to go about doing so.  However, there is lots of information on how to do it in the Rebuilding forum on myfico. 

In general, you want at least 2-3 open credit cards.  It doesn't matter from a scoring standpoint if they are secured or unsecured.   If you can get an unsecured CC without an AF, I would get it.  Maybe DCU?  However, I don't know how easy they are to get an unsecured CC with.  If I would think about a secured CC with someone like BoA who will unsecure or graduate the card after a year or so.   It doesn't matter the CL on the secured credit card.  Once the card graduates, the bank will likely increase the CL.  Ideally, you want a credit card that you can keep "forever".  For me that means no AF.

Once you have 2 bank or CU CC's, you might be able to get a store card of some kind simply because they are easier to get than bank CC's.  I would only get one that you will use, however.  Some common store cards are Kohls and Wallmart. Kohls may be easier to get and Wallmart offers a free FICO TU-08 score every month or so.

For online shopping, you could try the "Shopping card trick" (search myfico for the thread on how to do this).  The advantage of the shopping card trick is you know if you are going to be accepted before applying and it does not cost you a Hard Pull (HP).    A relatively easy Shopping card trick to get is the Victoria Secret CC.  Again, only get cards for places that you normally shop at.   

Do not get too many CC's while you are rebuilding.  Adding the credit cards will cause your score to drop for 6 months or so.  However, it will rebound and then some.  Plus if you let one card report a small balance (1-9%) and the other cards report no balance, you will be able to maximize your score for that month.

You mentioned you have a secured loan with DCU.   If you have a checking account with them, they will give you a free monthly EQ-04 score.  Once signed up, it will show up in your DCU inbox.   EQ-04 is the Equifax score used by mortgage lenders.