So today, I went to the websites of Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Capital One. All three have a “view your credit score” feature. So with Capital One, I have a score 809. Respectable. With Bank of America, my score is 837 - Great!. And Wells Fargo has my score at 850, which seem pretty improbable. Why would there be such a difference?
StG
Each company has their own algorithms for calculating credit scores. Actually, each brand has many different versions of credit scores for different customers, the one you see is a standard consumer-facing version that each company offers.
There’s no reason for all three brands to generate the same number. Also, they may not all have access to the same data sets on your credit, or they aren’t synced up to the same data yet.
It could be they’re each from one of the three different companies: Equifax, Transunion and Experian. Also, all three companies have different top scores, some be top at 850 and others at 880. Your FICO score is based on another algorithm of all three.
Unless you get the scores directly from all three companies on a specific date, third party companies like those you’ve listed may have newer or older scores than what’s current.
Your individual scores change (sometimes quite drastically if you take out a large loan or pay off a large CC debt) frequently, every 7-10 days or so. I went from below 550 (because I had almost $30K in CC debt consolidated by a debt consolidation company, and a then current ~10K CC debt) to over 800 in a month once I brought all my CC cards to zero. I’m currently hovering around the mid 700’s (all three reports) because I currently a ~5K in CC debts (0% APR promos) and my score will shoot up once I pay them off.
The other twist is that unless you ask, you’ll never know which company whomever is pulling your score (for a loan, car purchase, rental, etc) is using. However at over 800 on all three, you’re golden for almost anything. AFAIK, your FICO score is rarely used, unless it’s a very large loan, like a mortgage.
lingyi - Yep, I just paid off the mortgage on my farm. I have a mortgage on a rental home I own, so not entirely debt-free, but the rental income is almost twice the mortgage.
StG