It's always bothered me that only ONE company is responsible for the credit ratings of everyone in this country. Gotta love monopolies.

ACTUALLY... the BEACON is a real FICO.

There are tons on variations of FICO scores and the one you buy will probably vary from the one your lender buys.

@dragonfire81: Well, one company developed an industry-accepted algorithm that can be applied to all three credit bureaus and produce predictive measures of repayment likelihood.

There are a lot of other companies out there who have developed other scoring systems that measure you and have far greater impacts on your credit worthiness. INTERNAL scoring models are used by most major lenders in addition to FICO scores.

Companies like Lexus/Nexus, Fair Issac, Experian, Equifax, and Fiserv are just a few of the players in the custom-score for hire game. On top of that, some lenders have in-house developers for these internal scoring systems - their own PhD Mathematicians and Statisticians that do nothing but churn out these scorecards and track their effectiveness for the company.

This doesn't even begin to touch the niche-scoring/decisioning products that other companies develop and sell - things that can slice and dice way beyond FICO.

It's hardly a monopoly. For the majority of lenders, FICO is merely a springboard - they put a lot more time and money into custom scoring models that you'll never see that are developed outside of Fair Issac.

@dragonfire81: A monopoly on something that can impact your ability to have a place to live, get a job or buy insurance. This is so so wrong.

When I was shopping for a car loan 2 years back, my credit union rep told me that they use several scoring models-the FICO is only one of several score metrics they used, and he mentioned that they used a Beacon score alongside my FICO score to determing my loan amount.

Honestly, lenders may use any of the 'FAKO' scores in place of the hallowed FICO depending on what their internal metrics are, so one isnt more honest than the other.

"If you aren't planning on trying to obtain credit, I recommend using a credit score estimator, they are accurate enough."

This is pretty much what I go by. Knowing your *exact* score doesn't really do much. Having a general idea, is good enough. More importantly its best to know whats going on in your credit report, making sure all the payments are reported, only your credit lines, correct addresses, etc etc.

This industry is sorely in need of regulation. This is pure BS.

" Your score, however, won't be free. The only way to get that is to sign up for a free FICO credit score trial and cancel after you see your score. "

It works. Do it.

Could someone please tell me why I can get a free credit report but not score?

@VikingP77: There are many variations of FICO.

Having a clean credit report with low utilization will get you a good FICO score.

@VikingP77:

Because you are deemed to have the right to see your credit report so that you can correct inaccuracies, i.e. facts that are wrong (you didn't actually default on that credit card, you don't owe $10 million to Sallie Mae, etc. etc.). The FICO methodology is a matter of opinion, not a matter of fact.

@NeverLetMeDown: Thanks for the info!

Hello? "most lenders and credit grantors use FICO scores, not the proprietary ones" - FICO -IS- proprietary! They're just the Microsoft of credit scores.

PS: This is why you can't get a free credit score with your free report - it's proprietary.

PPS: If you want a free score, pretend you're interested in buying a house. Talk to your agent's preferred loan originator and let him "pre-qualify" you - he will pull your credit report and score, and HAS to give a copy of it to you by law. Then you can lose interest.

We only use the BEACON score at my job. I know my aunt's credit union uses it as well. I don't see how it's all that "fake".

What I don't understand is why you have to pay to know your OWN credit score? And why does checking more than once a year hurt your credit? I was just refused a credit card because I have "insufficient history" and because I've checked my credit score "too often" (which is weird to me, because while I tried to get a free credit report I gave up after finding out what a stinkin' hassle it was and never actually found out my score).

Why can't you know your own score? Why are you penalized if you try to keep an eye on it?

@bohemian: Not really. The information comes straight out of your credit report, which you have free access to. The FICO score is just one number resulting from that info. It's hardly a monopoly when there are several other "numbers" and scoring models out there.

To add to all this fun, you now have to worry about Experian letting employees in Central and South America accessing your credit information as well as controlling the servers they reside on.

@Trencher93: you know, you'll take a credit hit for doing this. is it worth possibly losing the best rate on a credit product or being denied altogether just to save $15?

@korybing: "checking your credit" only hurts your score when you initiate a "hard pull" - this is when you apply for new credit. your score drops b/c actively seeking credit makes you riskier than if you're not seeking credit. you are not penalized for checking your own report & your own score.

@Dorkington:

Agree that you don't need to know your exact scores most of the time, although I wouldn't even bother with an "estimator". Once you know the factors that go into credit scoring, it's pretty much just down to common sense. It's good to know what's in your credit reports, regardless of scores, so you can make sure everything is as it should be, but there's no need to be forever spending money on monitoring your scores.

@korybing:

Which lender turned you down for checking your own credit too often? They shouldn't even be able to see the inquiries you've made on your own report (as those are soft pulls, or should be, at any rate), BUT I believe there's another way lenders can see this information (they can get info on something like how many times your social security number has been "used" in the last 90 days - I forget the exact details, but this would include pulls you have made on your own credit report), although I fail to see why it is any of their business.

I certainly wouldn't want to do business with a company like that, anyway. What, they're going to turn you down for being the kind of savvy consumer that keeps tabs on their own creditworthiness? You're better off without them!

@Kimaroo - 20% More Kitty Added!: BEACON is infact a real FICO score.

@korybing: " "too often" (which is weird to me, because while I tried to get a free credit report I gave up after finding out what a stinkin' hassle it was and never actually found out my score)."

That isn't a valid denial reason. Are you sure it didn't say you had too many recent credit inquiries? A hard inquiry happens when you apply for credit.

I'd strongly urge you to call annual credit report and get those reports.

@MsAnthropy:

Oops, comment appeared in the wrong place!

@supercereal: Yes but how many creditors would use those other numbers/scoring models. I always thought FICO was the gold standard most banks and financial institutions went by.

@dragonfire81: Most major lending institutions use other numbers/scoring models. Only the really small/cheap rely on FICO.

FICO is generally used to determine rate and/or initial product offerings. FICO can be used to cull those pre-approval products because everyone agrees on FICO as a baseline. FICO makes a great rate determiner because if there are intermediaries (dealerships, mortgage brokers, those doing quick soft-pull inquiries), a FICO score quickly says, "look on your grid and see what a 712 score would qualify for as a rate" - especially if you work with multiple lenders.

Internal scoring models become the lifeblood of major banks and lenders because these are based not on the entire population as FICO is, but on the specific population that lender typically courts. To rely on a model that includes "everyone" when you really only lend to market segments does you no good in terms of predictiveness of liklihood of repayment. There are things in FICO that may "matter" that have never mattered to your population.

Not to mention, Internal Scores are far more nimble than FICO. FICO rarely gets major overhauls. You hear about a few things here and there - like when they stopped counting authorized user cards in your favor - but major overhauls are typically 4-5 years apart. That's a lifetime. Most lending institutions switch out internal scorecards every 2-3 years.

For example - you know how banks are slashing credit card limits now? Everywhere, lenders can track how this is impacting their current client base (there's a way to look at this currently via soft-pulls for your population). FICO has traditionally determined that "net fraction of revolving burden" is around 30% of your score. Lending institutions now know that this isn't up to you as an individual - so they can see how many of their existing clients this is impacting and to what degree. If they see that it's impacted over 80% of their existing clients with no discernible impact on repayment, they can immediately adjust their internal scoring model. They can basically buy "poor-scoring FICO" customers that are really low-risk per their actual population data.

FICO isn't gold by a long shot. It's just a springboard. And an easy way to set rates when going through 3rd parties.

Ah, the credit score. Nobody knows how it's calculated, we have to pay to even see our own, we have next to no rights about how our information is collected or who sees it, and companies use them to blatantly cherry-pick rich customers and discriminate against the poor.

If Orwell was alive, he'd be pissed that he didn't think of this.

@StanTheManDean: I found two ways to get my credit score. The freebie however can only be retrieved once a year. Secondly, instead of paying for the monthly service and then quitting after retrieving your scores, look for a business that will allow you to pull your scores for a one-time fee. It may be a bit more, say $5.00, but it is hassle free. And make sure you look for the pre-checked boxes in the fine print so they do not contact you or send you solicited messages. Otherwise, by missing these pre-checked boxes you have authorized them to do so.