www.credit.com free Credit Report Card - what kind of score is this?

[Anonymous]

I am a bit of a credit score junky, and recently came across this website: www.credit.com

They are apprently affiliates w/ many of the credit scoring websites, including myfico, truecr3dit, egguifax, etc.

They offer a Free Credit Report Card based on credit report from Transunion.  Their report card gives you an alphabetical grade for 5 categories: payment history, debt, credit age, credit mix, and new credit.  Their report card also gives a score range, from 300 to 850.

I have reasons to believe that they are reporting the score range based on an actual FICO model.  Anyone willing to investigate and help figure this out?

I have recent myfico.com TU scores, and a bunch of other recent scores.  The range showing by www.credit.com Free Report Card is close to my TU score.

Before you jump at me and say that only www.myfico.com can sell real FICO scores, let me give you some arguments:

- www.credit.com Free Credit Report Card is not giving you an actual FICO score.  Hence no claim about an actual FICO score,

- I believe that score gets updated every 90 days only.  So in practice, this is very similar to the myfico.com TU based identity monitoring service.

On their web-site, they have links to myfico.com, truecr3dit, egguifax, etc.

[haulingthescoreup]

This one was fun! It seems very similar to the FICO score estimator:

http://www.myfico.com/FICOCreditScoreEstimator/Estimator.aspx

What was odd was that the first time I went through it, I missed where I was supposed to report my 25-month-old 90-day late. When I got to the end, I scored 735 - 775, I think it was. I thought it was pretty strange that it had just asked me about 30 and 60-day lates, when I saw the congrats for not having a 90 lumped into the collections, BK's, etc.

So I went back and did it again, with identical info except that this time I put in the 90 (and it didn't ask about 30's or 60's), and I got a 548 - 588! Quite a change.

I agree that it's based on FICO scoring, but it sure doesn't weigh a solitary 90 the way FICO does. Thank goodness! (Current FICO's EQ 728 - TU 734 - EX 749.)

[marty56]

As I stated in another post it is a total uselss tool.  It might be good to scare people into showing the importance of paying bills on time.

I can see it now, pay on time or Keyser Soze will get you and you will loose 200 points on your CR 

[Anonymous]

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marty56 wrote:

As I stated in another post it is a total uselss tool.  It might be good to scare people into showing the importance of paying bills on time.

I can see it now, pay on time or Keyser Soze will get you and you will loose 200 points on your CR 

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Would you please provide a link to your post?

Also, when you say a "useless tool", what are you refering to?

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

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haulingthescoreup wrote:
This one was fun! It seems very similar to the FICO score estimator:

http://www.myfico.com/FICOCreditScoreEstimator/Estimator.aspx

What was odd was that the first time I went through it, I missed where I was supposed to report my 25-month-old 90-day late. When I got to the end, I scored 735 - 775, I think it was. I thought it was pretty strange that it had just asked me about 30 and 60-day lates, when I saw the congrats for not having a 90 lumped into the collections, BK's, etc.

So I went back and did it again, with identical info except that this time I put in the 90 (and it didn't ask about 30's or 60's), and I got a 548 - 588! Quite a change.

I agree that it's based on FICO scoring, but it sure doesn't weigh a solitary 90 the way FICO does. Thank goodness! (Current FICO's EQ 728 - TU 734 - EX 749.)

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I think you tried a different product on their page.

I meant the Free Credit Report Card, prominently displayed on the top part of the page, just below the navigation items:

https://www.credit.com/r/credit-report-card/af=p47751

You probably tried the "Free Credit Score Estimator", also called "Compass" once you click on it.

Message Edited by ChumChurum on 02-28-2008 10:35 PM

[Anonymous]

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ChumChurum wrote:

I am a bit of a credit score junky, and recently came across this website: www.credit.com

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I checked it out, and while I'm not sure it's based on the FICO model itself since that's proprietary information, it does give advice and commentary that is consistent with what we do know about the FICO model.  The commentary is verbose and tailored to the specific report.  Overall, I think it's an excellent way to get some feedback on a report and discover some areas for improvement.  It got my age of accounts correct, including oldest and average ages.  It got my revolving utilization correct.  It got my total CLs correct, as well as the number of accounts with a balance.  Amazingly, the advice on these items is right on!

I'm positive it's a TU pull, as well, since my collection showed up, and the only CRA that's reporting it is TU.

The credit score piece gave me a grade of "Fair," and the arrow was pointing just below 700.  My actual TU FICO is 686.

Lots of good points, but the one that really stood out to me was the scoring in the credit mix category.  I got a B because I have CCs and installment accounts, but no mortgage.  It also specifically commended me for not having any consumer finance accounts.

I only have a couple of criticisms:

1)  The report tells me I have three inquiries in the last year, when I actually have five.  Seems to be some sort of glitch.  I double checked this by pulling CS right after I pulled the report card, and yes, all five are still there.  The commentary tells me that of my three inquiries, two of them are "old" and only one of them is "recent."  In reality, inquiries affect FICO to their full extent for the entire twelve months; the effect of a single inquiry does not decay over time, until it stops counting altogether after twelve months.  The report card system seems to think otherwise.

2)  I got a C- on Payment History, yet my last late payment was 6 years ago.  That's kind of brutal.  The commentary even makes note of this and tells me that it's very possible my late payments are several years old and have almost stopped counting against my score.  OK, so why did I get a C- again?  Maybe the old collection.  But c'mon.  That's still not quite a fair grade IMO.  All the bad stuff on my report is ancient.

[Anonymous]

Well, that was interesting.

Cheddar, I hate to say it but I got a "fair" rating too. An A in utils; a B in(gosh I forgot.it's 4am and to early for me); C in credit mix; C in age of accounts(no surprise there), and I flunked payment history. Figured I would, with all the lates I had years ago. All in all, fairly accurate, with some inaccuracies. They must be using a dated cr from TU.

[Anonymous]

Cheddar and Sylviatob:

I would pay less attention to the individual category grades, because they "made" those up.  But I was also impressed how accurate their metrics were (oldest account, average account, total debt, total CL, mix of accounts), and I was impressed how well they explained the meaning of those things.

A few things:

1.  It is disclosed in plain sight that the report pulled is TU,

2.  It is updated every 90  days.  This setup is very similar to the myFICO.com TU-based monthly monitoring program at $4 and change.  So from marketing point of view, the comparable program from myFICO is about $4 a month, and the report update frequencies match,

3.  I am not sure how to explain the disparities between your actual TU report and what Credit Report Showed.  I have had an experience w/ myFICO.com when I pulled a new TU report and 4 very recent inquiries did not show up (there was some overalap between different programs, as I was using the TU_based monthly program and pulling TU scores at the same time).  There might be cashing going on on the TU-side, or cashing going on the credit.com or myFICO.com websites,

I did some analysis of various scores, and the credit.com range is closest to my TU score.  Other people's reports also confirm this.

Do people here know much about the different models, in particular the private-label versions of the FICO models:

- TU Empirica,

- different vintages of FICO,

- different versions of FICO (myFICO.com, PFICO, etc).

Given the accuracy of the feedback, I am tempted to believe that credit.com has people who worked both for Transunion and FICO.  Reading some blogs on their website confirms this.

Also, their reluctance to disclose the label of the scoring model might point to FICO as the source, because they don't want to compete w/ myFICO.com. 

When you click to upgrade to the "full report", they point you to truecredit, but otherwise they have links to various products on myfico.com and equifax score watch.

[Anonymous]

The account review inquiry appears on actual TU report as follows:

CREDIT.COM INC 
 550 15TH ST
SUITE 37
SAN FRANCISCO , CA 94103
(877) 273-4273

 Requested On:
 02/2008

Permissible purpose:

<none>

This is a fresh pull.

[marty56]

It was their score simulator.  It grouped 90 day lates, BK and CO in the same section so if you had a 90 day lates that was say 6 years old, it would treat it as current CO and lower your score like 200 points.

Not very accurate.