In my life I have been through many financial difficulties, much of it was due to my own foolishness. You remember that one L’Oreal commercial that ended with the tag line………..because you deserve it. Well I thought I deserved everything. I loved spending on the whim; I wanted every little thing my heart desired. I had survived college and had a wonderful job so spending money was something I thought I was suppose to do. I bought a house, bought a car, went to the mall weekly, hair was done weekly and often went for drinks and dinner with friends 3-4 times a week. Well that good life came to a screeching halt on 9/11/2001 when I got laid off from my fabulous job.
I was caught off guard… not only was America being attacked my life was falling apart. Long story short I lost my home… car was repossessed… and I was left with a bunch of clothes, furniture and other materialistic crap, not to mention my FICO score was in the toilet. My attempts to find a job seemed to be useless, no one was hiring and while I was thankful for the 250.00 a week in unemployment it was not enough to keep a roof over my head and food in my belly. I eventually got a job but was in serious debt. After careful consideration I filed bankruptcy and committed to living within my means and paying my bills on time.
I am vigilant about my credit and constantly keep track of my purchases and credit card balances. But fighting my way back from bankruptcy helped me to understand that organizations in the credit industry make it their goal to make money off of the consumers.
One such organization is Experian credit bureau. Fair Isaac has announced that as of February 14, 2009, the Experian credit bureau will stop offering FICO credit scores to consumers through the Fair Isaac consumer website myFICO.com or anywhere else for that matter.
This means that lenders will still have access to your FICO credit scores from Experian, but you will no longer be able to monitor your Experian FICO score yourself.
Experian does offer PLUS credit scores to consumers at Experian.com, but PLUS scores are pretty useless when you consider that the lenders only use your actual FICO scores when deciding whether to give you a loan.
Maybe Experian should consider only offering the PLUS score to lenders if they want to even the playing field, but it’s obvious by these actions that they don’t. So you see Experian will sell you a fake credit score but not your FICO score. So when you see those free credit report commercials be advised that you will not be getting the full scope of your credit score, so it may be a waste of time.
Many of us need our FICO scores to determine if we qualify for a mortgage, car, a line of credit, ect. But most lenders use our middle score to determine eligibility of credit. The middle score is basically that … If you have a 680 with Transunion, 599 with Experian and 635 with Equifax, then your middle score is 635. But if you are unable to obtain your Experian FICO score you are left in the dark and will not know what your middle score is. So you know what happens…you will be forced to but in an application for credit before you find out if you qualify for credit. This makes it harder to shop around for the bargain, because if you already know your middle score you can talk directly with finance managers and tell them what you score is before they place an inquiry on your credit report.
It may be time for the federal government to step in and take actions on behalf of the American consumer, as it is inherently unfair that a measurement such as the FICO score, which is solely used in many cases to judge a consumer’s creditworthiness, is unavailable for that consumer’s own personal review.
