Yesterday, Experian and Fair Isaac decided to end their relationship... and the result will be that in a few weeks, Consumers will no longer have access to their FICO scores.
"Currently, myFICO.com is the only place you can purchase your FICO scores based on your three credit reports
from Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. After February 13, 2009,
you won't be able to purchase your Experian credit report or FICO score
through myFICO.com. Moreover, you won't have access to your FICO score based on Experian data at all."
As a lender, we will still have access to the scores, and will continue to use them in decision making - however, the consumer will not have access... To get your current standing, order your Experian FICO score before February 13. After that the score won't be available. You can purchase your Experian credit score from Experian or Equifax, which both use a FICO-similar 300 to 850 point scale for credit scoring.
If you have questions about your credit, and are considering a NC purchase or refinance in the next 6 to 9 months, please call us, or click here for more information about credit scores!
Eleanor - Is it me or does this seem a tad unfair to consumers?
I think it's unfair... there was a question of $$ but I can't see how this could be losing money for them!
Eleanor - I thought that everyone had a right to get their scores at least once a year. Will all of that change? Thanks for keeping us so informed.
Very interesting.......but stupid! Why? How come? Just another way to mess up the consumer. Thanks for the info Eleanor, I hadn't heard this yet.
Hi Eleanor - I just pulled my reports through annualcreditreport.com AND ordered my FICO from Experian out of curiosity since I do this once a year anyway. Although I encountered the usual confusion (some reports print, some don't) when I dug around a bit I found no notices about people not being able to order their Experian credit scores after a certain date. Is it exclusively myFico.com?
We tell our students at the ABCs of Homebuying course to pull their own credit reports for the three bureaus annually, and to use www.annualcreditreport.com vs other less reputable sites/services.
Karen here's the article in Bloomburg this Afternoon - http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601213&sid=ah5D6rHqY5e0&refer=home
I also thought it was going to be a service they provided so you could check your score every year.
Eleanor,
It doesn't mention this in the article but I suspect the reason that Experian is no longer reporting its info to Fair Issac because they are switching to a diffferent credit score model known as the Vantage Score. I wrote about annualcreditreport.com in Sept and ordered my own score from Experian and had to get the Vantage Score and not the Fico.
http://activerain.com/blogsview/703287/Test-Driving-AnnualCreditReportcom
This is going to be very confusing for consumers because the scores are scaled differently. The top tier of credit under this model is 900+.
Michelle
Thanks for the link, Eleanor. So, it looks like it only affects people trying to pull their credit through that one website. Whew!