equifax products worth it?

[payinbills]

I am attempting to repair my credit. I have paid all of my collectors, and am now in the disputes process.

The the products that equifax offer, such as credit watch gold, and score watch (says it FICO) good tools for monitoring?

Thanks for you input

Payinbills!

[payinbills]

bump, please.

[dasani08810]

I have both services and like them. Score watch is dead on with MyFico and always has been. The thing I do like about score watch is that you can set parameters for notification of changes. For instance, my EQ score is 692, I set it to notify me when it gets above 695. Then they send me a notfication when it gets above that point and tells me what it is. Then, I'll go in an set it to tell me when it goes up another 5 points.

So, everytime I get an increase of score, I get a free update on what my score is. Beats paying to check it everytime I want to know.

[gary_u_trance]

i've been wondering this myself and have been searching the posts to see if i want to invest the money in MYFICO's "score watch".

Score watch is dead on with MyFico and always has been.

i think that's because, according the myfico.com website:

Score Watch monitors important

changes to your Equifax credit file

and FICO® score

my sense from the promo materials is that they calculate your FICO based on the data that they (EQ) have.

i'm losing interest in getting score watch because of AHNTARA's post about the different scoring models used by different pullers of your credit score. i guess they all use different algorithms for the data furnished by the CRA.

just starting down this path and may subscribe to score watch to watch the changes to encourage me. i've lost nearly 60 pounds (and kept it off!) over the last couple of years. the feedback of the success is an important psychological component to me. it's important to see that it's working, especially when i'm feeling discouraged. and, based on what i've read here, there's likely to be some discouragement during this process--even though i expect to succeed!

[stilltrying]

I don't think that Equifax's website does a good job of clearly explaining (in specific details) the differences among their products.

I'm trying to figure which is the right product for me.

I want to be able to monitor changes to my report while over the next few weeks I try to have some addresses deleted and an account with several late payments removed, but I am not interested in/I don't need to know about changes in my Eq score. And I don't need fraud insurance coverage.

I've read that Credit Watch Gold lets you look at your complete report up to one time per day. You also receive email alerts. The minimum subscription is 3 months, and I've read that if I order by phone I can ask for a cheaper yearly subscription than what the website charges. Credit Watch Gold does not include Eq score updates.

So, if I want to monitor when/if an address or an account is deleted, this sounds like what I want.

I'm not clear on the differences between Gold and Silver. But I think it sounds like you get one free complete online report and then each additional report is $7.50 And apparently the email alerts will come sometime up to a week after a change. The Silver service sounds like it's not good for monitoring in a timely manner changes to one's report (?)

Gold with 3-in-1 monitoring: There is scant information on the type/extent of monitoring on your changes to your TransUnion and Experian reports. Do you get daily monitoring on the Ex and TU reports ? Is the monitoring in the form of viewing a complete report, or do you just get alerted to changes to the Ex and TU reports ?

Score Watch:

I can't figure out how similar/dissimilar Score Watch is to Credit Watch Gold.

At https://www.econsumer.equifax.com/consumer/sitepage.ehtml?forward=cs_swe if you scroll down to the heading "Credit Monitoring" you get notification of

" * Name change

* Change of address

* New credit inquiries

* New accounts

* Changes to existing accounts

* New or changes to public records

* New or changes to collection accounts"

If that's the case, then what advantage is there of Credit Watch Gold over Score Watch ?

Also, how detailed are the email alerts about changes to information in one's credit report ?

Lastly, there is also Credit Watch by Mail.

There is not very much information about this, though I did find this: https://www.econsumer.equifax.com/equicom/prod/images/uib/images/EFX_WEB/en_US/Equifax_Credit_Watch.pdf

Edit:

I found something that clarifies things a little bit:

https://www.econsumer.equifax.com/consumer/sitepage.ehtml?forward=compareproducts_money

[kevin3344]

Trust me, you want to try this service. I have both Equifax Credit Watch Gold and Score Watch - and they are awesome. I even gave the EQ CWG as a gift to my brother and his DW and they love it. They added on the Score Watch later. With the help of this board and the service, both of us have improved our credit AND went from renting to purchasing a home in the last year. What does that tell you? It's the home of my dreams so I would have paid twice what they are charging now. When my lender pulled my CR the scores were dead on with EQ as dasani mentioned. Yes, there are different models and some vary - there's nothing we can do about that - but the standard is FICO. Go with the standard.

The alerts they send you via email basically say 'you have a new alert'. Just in case someone else reads your email, you don't want them seeing much more. Once you log on to EQ, however, the full details of what happened are there.

________

Wong Amat Tower Condos Pattaya

Edited September 9, 2011 by kevin3344

[stilltrying]

I apologize that it has taken me this long to reply. I wanted to say thank you! -- you gave me exactly the kind of information that I was looking for.

I have a follow-up question for anyone who might be able to comment. I spent some time searching for and reading some topics on this forum about credit monitoring services and split files. I'm not trying to achieve "bumpage" -- I just want to be able to check in, say, once a week to monitor the progress of trying to dispute a particular negative tradeline.

When people have talked about winding up with a split file, unfortunately most of the time it hasn't been reported how many times that a person pulled his/her own report via the credit monitoring service. I found one post where someone said that a supervisor scolded him for apparently causing the file split through pulling his report 148 times through Truecredit.

When I sign up for Equifax's creditwatch gold, is there a certain number of pulls that I should stay under to almost certainly gurantee that my file won't be split ?

If Equifax advertises that this product offers daily pulls, then why aren't there measures in place to prevent split files ? (Are they in denial that it is a commonplace problem ? Are they too lazy to fix it ? Is the problem too expensive to address ? Is it petty revenge ?)

http://www.debt-consolidation-credit-repair-service.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7049&highlight=equifax+split+file

http://www.debt-consolidation-credit-repair-service.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6543&highlight=equifax+split+file

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--> http://debt-consolidation-credit-repair-service.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=276&highlight=robin

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--> "Equifax Split File ??? or lost positive trade lines."

http://debt-consolidation-credit-repair-service.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10104

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--> "Here is the latest from Equifax"

http://www.debt-consolidation-credit-repair-service.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=9754&highlight=equifax+split+file

"EQ Split file"

http://www.debt-consolidation-credit-repair-service.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10021&highlight=equifax+split+file

"This is Bizzare - what to do?"

http://www.debt-consolidation-credit-repair-service.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10540&highlight=equifax+split+file