this seems like somewhat of a scam...

[Anonymous]

I got my free credit report from Transunion and it offered to sell me my credit score, so i paid the $8. What i did NOT realize was that it was giving me the Vantage score instead of FICO...and even when they gave me the score, it didn't say this until i clicked on "score analysis." just a warning....this seems like kind of a scam because they make it sound like you are receiving your FICO score.

[marty56]

Welcome to the forum.  Yes it is very confusing when all the places offer "credit scores".  Even those funny TV comericals (FreeCreditReport?) offer credit scores.  Unless it says FICO credit score, you can forget the score.  I agree that it borders on being a scam.  Unless it says FICO score, the score is called a FAKO score as in fake cedit score.  Many people here (me included have used FAKO scores to predict what would happen to our FICO scores only to be proven wrong.

I didnt realize that TU sells Vantage scores.  The only place I thought that sells them is Experian (EX).

[GFer]

Why would TU offrer Vantage to the consumer and Classic Fico 04 to business's when pulling the consumer's reports? I don't why they ALL don't use Fico's?!

[MattH]

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@GFer wrote:
Why would TU offrer Vantage to the consumer and Classic Fico 04 to business's when pulling the consumer's reports? I don't why they ALL don't use Fico's?!

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Because when Congress passed the law making the CRAs offer truly free annual credit reports the lobbyists managed to get what was intended to be a consumer-protection law turned into a business opportunity for the credit-reporting industry via deceptive marketing and upsells.  What I'd like to see is a law that says whenever Organization A conveys personal information about me to Organization B, within 30 days I get a verbatim copy of all information conveyed.  This law should apply to all organizations with more than 100 employees conveying information about me to other such organizations, whether public or private, unless certain specific and narrowly-tailored exceptions (such as criminal investigations in progress or genuine National Security matters) applied.

[Anonymous]

I had something similar happen with EX. I purchased the score only to find out that it wasn't a FICO.

Thanks for the useful post.

[llecs]

Most of these scores are marketed like a FICO score. That's probably one of the biggest issues in here too.

EX and TU developed their own scores (in addition to a Vantage) to make extra $$$. The hype is that everyone needs a credit score and they pull from these sources and fork out an extra $5. EX's Freecreditreport.com is a great example of that. They are raking in the dough and most of their customers are thinking that they have a real EX FICO score. Take any give day in the mortgage forum and you'll see how many realized after the fact that what they bought wasn't real.