Hi McGraw, and welcome to the insanity!
From my experience, when you first deal with a lendor/creditor, you are dealing with a cust. serv rep who knows about as much about credit scoring as I do about nuclear quantum physics. They often refer to any score they have access, from whatever source, as being a "FICO" score.
TU is a CRA. Any score referenced simply as a "TU" score only means that whatever method was used to produce that score was based on data in your TU credit file. It does not mean that it is a FICO score. And most lendors rely only on FICO scores.
Unless you get scores from myFICO, then you have no assurance that the score being provided to you was generated from the FairIsac FICO algorithm.
TU generates scores based on totally different scoring models. TU licenses the ability to report FICO scores based on the FairIsaac scoring algorithm, but the CRAs also have their own scoring algorithm, called Vantage, which is in no way comparable to FICO scoring. If you are dealing with TU, of course they want to vend to you their Vantage score rather than FICO, And most of the vendors of credit scores are not FICO scores. Ignore them.
Any lendor/creditor can base their credit decisions upon whatever model/score they wish to use. But dont let them snow you with representation that the score they give you is FICO. Your experience has clearly shown the opposite, and thus you have drawn the curtain back from the Wizard behind the Oz.
