What's the diffrence?

[magyar123]

While I know the difference between a hard pull and a soft pull - the hards do affect your credit score, the soft ones don't - what I have always wondered about is the difference in the credit reports that you/I get when requesting one, and the version that creditors get when they pull a hard one on you.
The propaganda advertisements of the credit bureaus to get you to request your report always carry the sentence "see for yourself what your creditors see".

[justbroke]

Well, see what they see isn't accurate. Most creditors these days, purely use a scoring model and never look at the actual "report". Their credit approval models rely totally on a FICO or other score developed by Fair Isaac, Beacon, Insurance, or other custom scoring models.

You're just a number.

[Trixie007]

This is such a complicated issue, largely because the 3 big bureau's don't want you to know exactly how it works, because that would make it easier for people to manipulate their scores. One little known fact is that auto loans, mortgages, and credit card companies actually use weighted scoring models... depending on which type of account they are looking to approve you for, ie auto loans, they weigh similar types of open accounts differently. This is why you will almost always show a higher score if you have a variety of tradelines: auto, cc, mortgage, other installment loans. Not all companies use these, but a lot do.

The reports that we can purchase for ourselves aren't terribly accurate, because they are making educated guesses for the most part on how each bureau factors their scoring model - they don't know for sure. I can't tell you how many times someone came in and said, oh, yeah, I monitor my scores, and they're up in the high 600's. Then I would pull them, and find out they are off by 40-100 points! The ones that I typically found to be closer were people who had that variety thing going for them.

[justbroke]

Trixie hits it right on the head. I would add that the real FICO score, which is available from Equifax and MyFico, are real FICO scores and match what mortgage lenders will give you.

Mine have always matched when I applied for mortgage loans. What didn't match, were my Auto scores and Insurance Scores. I was able to find my Insurance Score from another place.

Don't even think about credit card companies because each of them appear to use different models!!!