The number that credit reporting bureau Experian supplies to lenders when you apply for a loan, used to evaluate whether the company should extend credit to you, will soon be unavailable to customers. At midnight tonight, customers will no longer be able to visit MyFICO to buy their own credit scores from Experian.
After today, the only way you will be able to access the score that represents your creditworthiness is to apply for a loan and ask for it. Even if you do this, it’s not guaranteed that the lender will comply.
Credit bureaus are now required to supply a free credit report three times a year (one from each bureau) through AnnualCreditReport.com. This is helpful to ensure that there are no mistakes on your report, but the only way to come close to fully understanding what lenders see about you when you apply for a loan is to know your FICO credit score.
This information should be free and available anytime. Right now, you have to pay if you want your real FICO scores from the three bureaus. Any score you find offered for free is an estimation, even if it is based on formulas similar to the ones used by the bureaus for the official score. And with Experian pulling out of their agreement with MyFICO, the company is saying that customers do not deserve to know the same personal information that lenders, employers, and landlords see.
I am not happy with this change. Part of me thinks that the executives at Experian will “change their mind” tomorrow and decide to continue offering the score for purchase. If they do, it will probably be an extremely successful hoax meant to encourage customers to panic and buy their scores tonight. Either way, this is a step in the wrong direction for consumers.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Did Experian not want to adopt the FICO 08 system? Just another inconvenience at a time when lenders are already flashing the red signal to many people, being stricter than ever.
If consumers have one less resource while lenders still have the option, we really can’t win can we?
I got our free credit report in 2008 and was uncertain why we didn’t have access to our credit score as well. We recently tried to apply for a refi on our house and opted to receive a credit score rating. I’m still confused why this law is changing and don’t know why we had to pay for our score in the first place.
This won’t last. Some congressman will introduce a bill requiring that they divulge your credit score. It simply isn’t fair to us that we can’t see it.
How do you know they will introduce a new bill in the congress to divulge all credit scores ? I hope they do.
Who says fair has anything to do with it? They have a right to keep their info. Consumers should push more on lenders to not use Experian rather than demand compliance.
ugh
(at experian, etc.)
Try Quizzle.com. You can get all this info for free.