The Scoop on Credit Reports

A Huge Misunderstanding

One of the biggest mistakes we see people making every day is paying for a credit report online to see their credit scores. Did you know that consumer credit reports are completely different than the credit reports that lending institutions use? In fact, the credit scores that you see are typically lower or in some cases higher than what we will see when we pull your credit.

Why the difference?

Most of the consumer credit reporting companies use a scoring algorithm called Vantage. Many of them use their own proprietary scoring models but only a few use a true FICO scoring system. FICO is the scoring system that we use in the lending world and therefore we’re typically seeing different scores than our customers see when pulling their own credit reports online.

Should you pull your own credit?

Absolutely! We would advise that you don’t use the big name (TV commercial) credit reporting companies though. The official FTC endorsed consumer credit reporting agency is AnnualCreditReport.com. You can download your credit report every twelve months for free. If you want to see your true FICO scores you can pay for it additionally. Regardless of whether or not you pay to see your scores, the contents of your credit report should be the same thing we see if you pull your credit from all three major credit bureaues: Trans Union, Experian & Equifax.