Please help?

[Anonymous]

Dear all: First thanks for all of the useful posts and help. I had my credit score increased quite a bit during last year. My question is: I just checked my three credit reports and scores, and found out that my Equifax had the lowest score. I then took a close look at the three reports and found that all of the credit cards two year payment history are unknown on the Equifax. This is odd because I have been making on-time payments and they are shown ok on other two reports (Transunion and Experian). Is this the reason why I am getting a lower score on Equifax and what can I do to improve my Equifax score? thanks,

[Anonymous]

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mikerock wrote:
Dear all: First thanks for all of the useful posts and help. I had my credit score increased quite a bit during last year. My question is: I just checked my three credit reports and scores, and found out that my Equifax had the lowest score. I then took a close look at the three reports and found that all of the credit cards two year payment history are unknown on the Equifax. This is odd because I have been making on-time payments and they are shown ok on other two reports (Transunion and Experian). Is this the reason why I am getting a lower score on Equifax and what can I do to improve my Equifax score? thanks,

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This is not the reason.  Assuming there are no late payments reported on EQ that aren't on the others, your EQ report has the same history as the other two; it just doesn't format well on resold reports like the one you buy from MyFICO.

How far off is the EQ score from the other two?  Are there any other differences?  Assuming all the reports are identical, a difference up to 20 points or so would not be out of the question, since each CRA uses a slightly different FICO scoring algorithm.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the reply, actually my EX has the highest score with 736 and my EQ has the lowest 686, my TU is in the middle 708. There are two recent inquires on EX, 3 on EQ and 0 on TU, and that is the only differences through three report.

[Anonymous]

Depending on your CR, inqs have hit me -20 for the first, -10 for each after up to a total of -40 or -50. My history doesn't show up on my monitoring service either. Inq really bring down scores. Also your balances could be reporting on different days giving you different scores. But Inqs are enough to swing 20-30 point score differences. Some inqs don't count and some hurt less and others hurt more. Some are old and don't show up.

Are you comparing scores using the FICO score on all 3 credit reports which can "only" be bought from MyFICO.com. If you got your scores anywhere else they are completely different. You need to get all 3 scores from the same place to compare since each place that you have access to uses different scoring models while the lenders use FICO. If you got all 3 from here, you would need to go over every bit of data but compare when there are 0 inqs on all 3. Its very hard to determine how many points your inqs are lowering your score. Each can be different. I don't always know until they fall off and I see my score go up 10 or 20 points. Then I know. Or when I get them my score drops 10 or 20 ect...

Message Edited by ilovepizza on 04-03-2008 08:38 PM

[haulingthescoreup]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Dear all: First thanks for all of the useful posts and help. I had my credit score increased quite a bit during last year. My question is: I just checked my three credit reports and scores, and found out that my Equifax had the lowest score. I then took a close look at the three reports and found that all of the credit cards two year payment history are unknown on the Equifax. This is odd because I have been making on-time payments and they are shown ok on other two reports (Transunion and Experian). Is this the reason why I am getting a lower score on Equifax and what can I do to improve my Equifax score? thanks,

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As cheddar said, EQ reports often display oddly on secondary reports.

Did you ever have any lates? Each CRA commissions a different formula from FICO, and different behaviors are rewarded and penalized with each formula. In my experience, and that of my adult children, EQ penalizes more heavily for lates than do the other two CRA's.