Getting your Credit Report and Score?
Once a year we are all able to obtain our Credit Report and Score for free, right? So when looking for a website that does this, should I be looking for something in particular? In years past I've gone with www.freecreditreport.com and they never would give me my free credit score like it says they will, only the report. And even then I have trouble getting all 3 of my reports. I usually only get one. Any help? Any websites suggested? What should I look for in a website?
Public Comments
- annual credit report.com will provide this for you. or you can simply contact each bureau yourself and they will send you one free report each year.
- FreeCreditReport.com requires you to sign up for their monitoring service. If you don't cancel within the 30-day trial period, they start charging your credit card every month. You also only get the report from their bureau, not the other two. AnnualCreditReport.com is the site set up to access your report for all three credit bureaus. It is the only site approved by the FTC. You are entitled to one free report per year from each of the three bureaus. Scores are proprietary and you have to pay. You don't really need your score but if you want it, go to MyFICO.com. You still have to pay but you get your real FICO score, not the Fako score used by two of the credit bureaus.
- To the contributor who said "fako" scores, all scores are statistical models. FICO is not really better just more expensive because people like you feel they are better and therefore they charge a premium. All scores are built the same data (i.e credit reports). Also there are dozens if not hundreds of different (model) scores. Some predict bankruptcy, others the likelihood that you will default on a mortgage. There seems to be a lot of misinformation on this industry still.
- annualcreditreport.com will give u a copy for each every 12 months for free , if you want your score you have to pay 4.99 freecreditreport.com you have to sign up for it and cancel it before if not you have to pay for this service
- The government program to help consumers learn about their credit is run at annualcreditreport.com. You are only entitled to receive a credit report, not your credit score. You get one report from each bureau once per year. If you are looking for a good place to get your credit score, I suggest you go straight to the source, at myfico.com. I used to use this website to help get my credit in line to prepare to buy a home. I was very happy with it and I was able to purchase a home 4 months ago. FICO is the company that makes credit scores in the first place, so any other website you are getting the information second-hand at best. Some of the sites don't even use the fico score, they make up their own formula to determine your score. Since creditors use fico, it doesn't really do you any good to get some other score. Sometimes they are the same, but they are different quite a bit as well. Myfico.com has lots of information that other sites don't have about how to improve your credit, as well as tools that will estimate what you credit score might be if you do certain things, like open a new credit card or make a late payment. My favorite part of the website is the free forums, where there are lots of knowledgable people there who can give you advice about improving your credit. I probably sound like I work for FICO or something, but I don't. I just really loved their website and I like to tell people about it.
