Ok so Im a little new to this. I did pay and get my fico score about 2 years ago, but is there a way to get this " score" without paying?
I went to annualcreditreport.com and got my experian report, but although it says I have no negative items - it really does not supply a credit score or anything to judge by.
I thought that this experian report would provide a credit score? Is the score on one of the other 2 credit companies?
What all am I missing? Is it best to just go to Fico.com and pay for score?
thanks.

Get a WaMu credit card. Many of them provide you the TransUnion score each month for free.

Get a WaMu credit card. Many of them provide you the TransUnion score each month for free.

Or go to myfico and get your scores. Gotta pay.

You get your free annual credit report from the 3 major players but not your score. Kind of annoying that lobbyists kept Congress from requiring that.

The purpose is totally different. The reason you can get those reports free is to check for errors and such. There are no errors to check for in a credit score, thus for the purpose that the legistlation was trying to address it's useless.

It's obviously useful for other reasons, but those aren't the reasons the "annual credit report" legislation was created.

It is hard to get a true FICO score without paying. myfico used to give a free month, but you have to pay after that. The FAKO scores that all of the other websites give you are pretty much useless. Between True Credit and Credit Secure I see a over 100 point variance on my Experian FAKO.

Your bank also might tell you what your score is after you apply. Mine did when they pulled my TU report for a HELOC. It was a little lower than the FAKO Credit Secure told me, but higher than True Credit.

I think the rationale was that the 3 credit reporting companies should let you see your own report for free once a year so you could check to see whether all the information they were reporting on you was correct, allowing you to dispute whatever you thought was incorrect. There is no such rationale with respect to the FICO score, which produces a number based on the credit reports from those 3 and Fair Isaacs proprietary algorithm. So not sure any legislative proposal was defeated by lobbyists, rather than that none was ever on the table.

Real reason was Repubs (and many Dems) folded to industry pressure to keep consumers in the dark about their credit and to permit vastly profitable selling of scores to consumers.

Fair Issacs claimed "proprietary"algorithm is almost entirely public knowledge, at least in the industy and on FT and Fat Wallet etc. Just read a few threads on how to improve your credit score. It was originally developed to try and protect the famously biased credit granting business from racial etc. discrimination lawsuits. And, it powered the vast run up in credit card junk mailings and card issuance.

Scores should be freely available, but, ain't.

duplicate

If that were true, that FICO scores were not covered "to permit vastly profitable selling of scores to consumers," then why isn't Fair Isaacs realizing that profit by selling FICO scores directly to us? Why do you think the algorithm Fair Isaacs uses to generate those score is any less "proprietary" than the secret recipe/formula for Coke? There is no patent on either of those, so if you knew the "incredients" and their proportions, then you would be free to duplicate the concoction.

If the score derived from that algorithm "is almost entirely public knowledge, at least in the industy and on FT and Fat Wallet etc.," then why don't others, like the 3 credit reporting companies, offer scores that correlate much better than the FACO scores?

What is the relevance of that to what we are discussing here?

Yes, it is. Use this discount code: cppsavings

Cheers!

FI's "proprietary" scoring system is well known as to its ingredients in the industry. As to why FI doesn't sell scores direct to consumers--of course, it does and has been doing so for years. See http://www.myfico.com/

FI and the various bureaus are really part of a tight little cartel. They don't compete with each other very much.

As to the background info on credit scores provided ... if it doesn't interest you, don't read it. It is certainly on topic for this thread.

By the way, anyone who thinks the formula for Coke is a secret probably also thinks that no one but KFC knows what the "secret spices" are.

The New York Times and others believe Coke's recipe has remained a secret. Indeed, not too long ago, the FBI nabbed three people for trying to sell details to Coke's main revival, Pepsi, for a hefty sum. So, if you know Coke's recipe, please share it.

The same with the algorithm for FICO scores. Please share that algorithm or point us to where it can be found, so we can calculate our scores for ourselves. I have seen breakdowns of how much different factors are supposed to be weighted, e.g., 35% payment history, but nothing that would allow one to calculate their own score with any meaningful precision, e.g., within 50 points.

http://wombletradesecrets.blogspot.c...-fbi-nabs.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/07/bu...ia/07adco.html
http://www.networkworld.com/news/200...as-secret.html

What I think people who aren't in the software development field may not realize is just how much can go into such an algorithm. At most what's "known" publicly are the general parameters, such as, say, average age of accounts, average utilitization, maximum utiltization, etc. But there's a lot of detail necessary to implement each of these, and the results can vary tremendously based on these details. Just some of these details could include:

• Are all three reporting services equally weighed, or is there a different weight for TransUnion vs Experian vs Equifax?
  
• If information is found in multiple reports and differs, how do they resolve that?
  
• If information is found in multiple reports and is the same, do they count it twice or once?
  
• If different accounts have reported at different times in a particular report (when I get a report, it's timely for some accounts, but out of date for other accounts), how/do they compensate for that?
  
• Do they use just one report from each agency, or do they get multiple reports over some period of time?
  
• Do they have special knowledge about some accounts (such as the fact that Amex reports "hi balance" in the same field as a CC reports "hi limit") or not?
  
• Exactly how far back do they go in history? Does it vary for different types of accounts?
  
• Do they ignore certain account issuers because of a history of unreliability of the data from such issuers?
  
• Do they weigh certain account issuers higher than others?
  
• Do they weigh certain types of accounts higher than others?

Since it's a computer program that's implementing the algorithm (and likely a full-time staff maintaining that algorithm), there's no reason for the algorithm to be simple/short enough to explain in a newspaper/magazine story. In fact, there's not even a reason for the algorithm to be simple enough to explain in "plain English". I wouldn't be surprised if it requires a complex many-page flowchart to explain it.

Itsme: you have provided useful info before, so I assume you got out of bed on the wrong side (metaphorically speaking) and are just a little testy right now.

As far as Coke goes, you can buy essentially the same product (with perhaps less effective ads) from Pepsi, Sam's Club etc. Folks tell me Sam's is just about the same as Coke. I guess Wal-Mart figured out the "secret."

As to FICO, it is true that Fair I. claims its formula is top secret, but that's how they make their money, selling the "secret." There are lots of places on the web to get quasi FICO scores which are close enough. Check out the three bureau sites for starters. I think we all, just from looking at FT and Fat Wallet have a pretty good idea of what goes into a credit score. Pay bills on time, keep old accts open, keep credit line use down, etc. Credit scoring is no mystery, but, like a lot of the rest of the financial services, there is a lot of effort put into cloaking it in a heavy haze.

No, they are not close enough. Fake scores are mostly useless and can't be trusted if you are basing credit applications on them. Right now TrueCredit reports my Experian score as 648. Amex Credit Secure reports it as 745. I should be near the 745 mark based on my actual FICO I recently had pulled from my bank.