Are FAKO's useless?

[eastoutwest]

Forum:

My partner and I recently applied for a mortgage. We have been diligent CIC readers for two years now, and we credit these forums with putting us in a position to actually get a good fixed-rate mortgage.

What is concerning us currently is that the FICO and Beacon scores that our mortgage broker pulled and showed to us were NOWHERE NEAR the FAKOs reported by True Credit. I understand the Beacon is a differnet model, but I was SHOCKED that the FICO was so different than the FAKOS.

All three FAKOs were at least 50 points off from the actual FICO. In fact, the Experian FAKO was 100 points off the actual FICO.

Our mortgage broker just laughed and said that FAKOs are for "consumer education" use only and shouldn't really be trusted.

Why exactly have I been paying $14.95 a month to get FAKOS that are 50-100 points off from the actual FICO???

Some days this game gets irritating!

[willingtocope]

Your broker was right...nobody who's going to give you credit looks at FAKOs. At best, they're an approximation of the "here's a sucker that CC's will make money off of" FICO model...at worst, they're a flat out rip off.

[Ahntara]

FAKO's and other scoring programs are something else...information products. Marketing has created the (artificial) need for this product by simply asking the question "What's your credit score?". It shouldn't surprise any of us that enterprising companies (many already in the information business) came up with a product to pacify us. Have you seen those TC commercials lately?

Come to think of it, pacifiers is a good way to think of consumer-oriented scores. They provide something to suck on while our credit improves enough to use a lender-provided score for a loan.