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Monitoring your credit with TrueCredit

 

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Question:

I am preparing to refinance a mortgage and want my middle credit score to be above 760. Is having an account with TrueCredit's "3-Bureau Credit Monitoring Service" a good idea for me?
The lenders I work with pull all three agencies' scores and use the middle one of the three.

Answer:

TrueCredit gets points for a nice user interface, trending graphics, debt to income calculations and so forth. The make it easy to compare the information that all 3 agencies have on file for you.

TrueCredit gets BIG MINUS points for having lots of advertising. I personally have an account with TrueCredit ($14.95/ month) and it disgusts me that after logging in, I am constantly bombarded with affiliate links where they want to sell me refinances, new mortgages, credit cards, insurances - you get the picture.
I feel that on a pay-for site, there should be ZERO ads.

Now about the credit scores. I suspect that TrueCredit's numbers are worthless.

Let me give you an example.

I have been monitoring my 3 scores over the past 2 months with TrueCredit and the number that they have as my "Equifax score" has been hovering between 800 and 787. Yesterday it was 800.

Parallel, I have a subscription to Equifax's Scorewatch product. It is an annual subscription, and it comes with 2 Scorepower Credit Reports. These include a "FICO" score, based on the Equifax credit report.

Note that this means that there are at least 3 FICO scores available:

Equifax FICO score
Experian FICO score
Transunion FICO score

So I obtained a new Equifax FICO score yesterday. It came back as 752.

Note that TrueCredit reports my "Equifax score" as 800 (with occasionally dipping to 787)

Further, there is the "official FICO" score that you can get from www.myfico.com

So now we are having 7 different numbers:

TrueCredit's version of Equifax, Experian and TU's score (3)
Each agency has a FICO score (3)
The "official" fico score that you get at www.myfico.com

I just talked to my lender on the phone again. She said that they pull each agencie's FICO score.

I believe that this means that the numbers reported on TrueCredit are useless. I also heard that they are referred to as FAKO scores in the industry.

After finding this out, I tried to cancel my TrueCredit membership. It appears that it is not possible to do this online. I found this phone number to cancel TrueCredit:

Simply telephone our Customer Service Team toll-free at (800) 493-2392
and a service professional will be happy to cancel your free trial subscription.
Representatives are available

Monday through Thursday, 8 a.m. to Midnight
Friday through Sunday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Eastern time


(From https://www.truecredit.com/popup/freeTrialExample.jsp)

It was very easy to cancel my membership. The customer service representative confirmed that each agency has a custom formula that they can apply to all 3 available reports. He also confirmed that the mortgage industry relies on the FICO model instead of custom formulas. Therefore those Transunion numbers were indeed useless for me.


Comments:

2007-11-19, 19:20:48
anonymous from United States  
I too cancelled my service; however, it almost seemed like I was at a used car dealership. It took almost 5 minites for me to convince the representative that I was no longer interested in the service (since we have Equifax 3in1 Monitoring, and it is about 3 days quicker on inquiries, accounts and everything else).
2008-01-21, 09:51:47
anonymous from Norfolk, United States  
rating
I switched from TrueCredit to LifeLock due to a cheaper monthly rate, higher monetary protection, and services that TC doesn't provide. TC makes it VERY DIFFICULT to find the phone number to cancel, it's buried in the membership information- and I also believe their credit score numbers are so inaccurate they are useless. NONE of the numbers matched up to what my lender pulled up- (to my benefit, the lenders numbers were better than TC's) PLUS, my wife had a HAWK alert on her report that we couldn't see, but our lender told us about- which turned out to be a credit bureau data entry mistake. (Yea, THAT'S a surprise, right?) So, TC monitoring is just another way for the credit bureau to make money for nothing. DON'T BOTHER. Andy the Paramedic, Norfolk VA.
2008-03-06, 16:02:02
anonymous from Irving, United States  
It's so difficult to find the True Credit phone number. Unfortunately that's the only way to cancel a membership. I had to cancel it twice. I spent 10 and 5 minutes correspondingly trying to convince the person on the line that I didn't need that membership any more. The truth is that there were so many changes in my credit profile that True Credit didn't report that I got fed up with them and I subscribed for credit monitoring with another company! In other words, I had a really bad experience with True Credit…
2008-05-07, 22:21:32
anonymous from United States  
rating
I have found TrueCredit monitoring to be essentially useless. TransUnion is one of the most user-hostile companies I have ever dealt with. Their main number has NO way to get to a person unless you have a credit report number. The credit reports from TrueCredit do not contain such a number. The agents who answer the phones at TrueCredit are not native English speakers and I have had to repeat myself 3 or 4 times to try to get the person to understand me and then finally give up without ever getting the information I needed. I signed up for the free trial because I needed to have a fraud alert removed from my TransUnion credit report, a seemingly simple request which Equifax and Experian handled quickly and correctly. I am now 1 week into this with TransUnion and still do not think they have removed the fraud alert as I asked. The reason I say 'think' is because I can not get an updated credit report from TrueCredit. After they supposedly processed my request to remove the fraud alert from my report, TrueCredit helpfully locked me out of my account and would not let me log back in (leading me to believe, as one of their representatives told me, that they ADDED a fraud alert to my account rather than removing the one already there - not surprising if the people processing the request know as little Engilsh as the people answering the phones). I finally got back in but every time I try to get an updated report I get a ridiculous message that states that I have updated my report in the last 24 hours so I can not update it again. Of course that would have been awfully difficult since I was locked out of my account. Apparently their programmers failed to check that the update was successful before resetting the 24 hour time limit so every unsuccessful attempt locks me out for another 24 hours. I have both Experian and Equifax monitoring and Equifax is by far the best, has 24 hour customer service with people who actually understand spoken English (unlike TrueCredit), and were able to remove the fraud alert quickly. If I ever succeed in getting an updated report from TrueCredit and am able to verify that the fraud alert is removed I will immediately cancel the service. The only reason I considered it was that I read a review that it was the best value for the money. In actuality there is very little value at all and I pay less for Equifax 3-in-1 monitoring that TrueCredit would cost and Equifax does not CONTINUALLY bombard me with advertisements like TrueCredit does. Even Experian would be a vastly superior choice to TrueCredit. The people at TrueCredit should be ashamed of themselves for shoddy programming, terrible customer support (since the people only barely speak English), and lastly their association with the most user-hostile of the 3 credit bureaus (I have still not managed to speak to an actual person at TransUnion about their apparent failure to remove my fraud alert since their voice menu system hangs up on me rather than transferring me to a representative).
2008-06-04, 13:47:53
anonymous from United States  
rating
What a scam this company is. I have been trying to cancel my account. After holding for over 10 minutes, I was automatically disconnected. i agree that the phone number was extremely difficult to find. I then redialed, and after 15 minutes, I am STILL on hold. To be continued, if I am ever able to talk to someone....
2008-06-04, 14:05:49
anonymous from United States  
rating
Well, after over 1/2 hour on hold, to include my disconnected call, I was unable to cancel the account because my husband was not here to confirm some information. So, I'll try writing to the company to see if I can get it accomplished that way. HOW FRUSTRATING!!!

 

 

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