Credit score discrepancy

[Alfonso]

I’ve signed up with FreeCreditScore.com credit monitoring service a couple of months ago. Since then I’ve applied for an auto loan, and a Capital One secured credit card (that added two inquiries to my report).

With the credit card I get the capital one Credit Inform service, and I’ve noticed that the credit score they report is 39 points higher than what my credit monitoring service shows, although both use my Experian credit report.

I expected both to be identical. Does FreeCreditScore.com and Capital One’s Credit Inform determine their scores differently?

[Tracy Winters]

Both are “FAKKO” scores

Third party credit scores are only an estimate (See fakko-score.html). These scores are also known as “FAKKO scores”, fake scores or educational scores, and are practically useless.

The only place that sells “Real” Fico scores to consumers is myFico.com, and even they have few Fico versions, but you can get only a generic Fico score (called “Standard”). A single Fico check cost around $8.

Each of the 3 major credit bureaus also uses its own formula. They sell scores to lenders and consumers, and so they keep their formula to themselves and don’t share it with third party companies like FreeCreditScore.

My advice to you is to cancel the FreeCreditScore.com subscription. It’s really useless.
You can get your actual credit reports for free from AnnualCreditReport, and the score you get there is useless anyway (p.s. ever wondered why they are called FreeCreditScore but nothing there is free?…)

The Capital One’s Credit Inform is certainly good enough, and you can get another free credit score service and free credit monitoring at CreditKarma. Both are free!

[Author]

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