TransUnion paid for products (rant)

[BarkingGhostar]

Anyone else paying for the TransUnion 3-in-1 monthly products?

I use to get weekly updates ("You're in the clear' emails) and then it stopped. Logged into the TU account and everything seemed fine in terms of my account information and personal settings, but then I discovered I could not look at my credit score or review or refresh my reports.

Like most anti-customer companies, TU does a wonderful call center experience and they play the issue off as being a problem on the customer end. "Can you please try another browser," crap is met with me responding, "I've tried IE11 on W7, IEsomething on W10, FF45 in W7, 10 and Linux Mint 14, Google Chrome on W7/10/LM14, Safari in OS X."

"Can you try another browser?" the continue. I asked, "Sure, name me whatever the hell browswer you think works best since none of the broswers used by 99.99% of the human race is good enough for TransUnion." Only then to they comp that the problem is with their website upgrades.

OK, but those upgrades are not permitting me to get what I am paying for. Its been a week in trying, had them open two tickets to their 'so called IT' department and I still cannot access anything useful. I also verified they are charging me on a monthly basis, but I guess I should not cancel since I cannot get what I already paid for.

Completely worthless--as we all knew.

 

[gorcorps]

They're probably so flabbergasted that anybody would pay for it that they don't know what to do when they actually get a customer calling in.

 

[ultimatebob]

They're probably so flabbergasted that anybody would pay for it that they don't know what to do when they actually get a customer calling in.

Yeah, paying for credit scores or credit monitoring seems like an odd thing to do nowadays. Many credit cards like Discover give you a monthly FICO score for free, and there are other free credit monitoring services from Mint and Credit Karma that will notify you of changes to your credit report.

It's too bad that the credit scores that Mint and Credit Karma give you are kinda useless, since they are all over the map. Mint says that I have a 710 score, while Credit Karma says that I either a 730 (Transunion) or 790 (Experian) credit score. Discover says that I have a 720 FICO, and Ally says that I have a 760 Automotive FICO.

I had a short sale about 18 months ago, and it seems that all of the credit agencies weigh the impact of that default differently.

 

[dullard]

It's too bad that the credit scores that Mint and Credit Karma give you are kinda useless, since they are all over the map. Mint says that I have a 710 score, while Credit Karma says that I either a 730 (Transunion) or 790 (Experian) credit score. Discover says that I have a 720 FICO, and Ally says that I have a 760 Automotive FICO.

Sounds like Mint and Credit Karma are not useless for you. They basically match the actual scores. Remember, differences of say ~50 points are meaningless because your score can vary by that amount day by day.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I thight the scores provided to the consumer were not FICO. I have not seen any of the three major credit reporting companies advertise their scores directly to me as Fico. I do understand there is a Fico reporting condition, but that I figured took another way of calculating for a specific purpose.

BTW, my Fico is usually around mid-800's and my scores in general cannot get any higher (max'd). But I would like to have been able to verify this online, and directly with the reporting agencies and not go third parties to data mine.

I guess I was more interested in seeing if anyone else was having the same issue I was experiencing. I guess not.

 

[ultimatebob]

I thight the scores provided to the consumer were not FICO. I have not seen any of the three major credit reporting companies advertise their scores directly to me as Fico. I do understand there is a Fico reporting condition, but that I figured took another way of calculating for a specific purpose.

BTW, my Fico is usually around mid-800's and my scores in general cannot get any higher (max'd). But I would like to have been able to verify this online, and directly with the reporting agencies and not go third parties to data mine.

I guess I was more interested in seeing if anyone else was having the same issue I was experiencing. I guess not.

Discover gives you a free "real" FICO score monthly if you're a cardholder. Ally will give you a free automotive FICO score (different scoring model) if you're a customer with them, which is useful if you want to buy a car and not sure if you qualify for the best rate.

If you have a mid 800's score, you don't really have anything to worry about. You probably just need to check your free annual credit reports twice a year to make sure that someone didn't open a new account in your name.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

So the TU product I had, not cancelled, was no longer available from TU after 2011. Those that had it were allowed to keep it and it wasn't an unlimited 3-in-1 that I thought, but only a once-per-month 3-in-1 with unlimited TU. That being said, if one has the product and cancels they cannot get it back.

Also, TU informed me that the way they provide a score is based on a system that wasn't the one I observed back in Q3 2014. Then the range was 500-990, but the current system is 300-850. I wonder if this is the 'Fico' system.

But in the end none of this means cow brownies as TU cannot provide access online to scores or reports for me, my wife and at least one of my friends. The issue I've been experiencing has been going on for at least a week and a half.

What corporation allows their IT department to take down the functional aspects of their paid for portal and not be concerned over losing customers? I guess everyone only looks at their report (detail, not score) once or twice a year at most in order to be free.

To me, a lot can happen in six months in terms of ID fraud.

 

[dullard]

What corporation allows their IT department to take down the functional aspects of their paid for portal and not be concerned over losing customers? I guess everyone only looks at their report (detail, not score) once or twice a year at most in order to be free.

To me, a lot can happen in six months in terms of ID fraud.

The report is what matters to people, not the score. What I mean from that is you can correct a report, you can do nothing about the score. It is what it is. So knowing the score is actually meaningless because you can't do anything with it (and it changes daily by large amounts so there is not really a "score" to know). Plus, you can pretty easily calculate a good-enough rough score from your own report if you take a few minutes.

It isn't like the credit score will be updated the instant you have fraud on your account. It takes time for someone to open an account in your name, rack up tons of debt, not pay it off, have the companies report it to the credit agencies, and then have it impact your score. Checking your score frequently is giving you a false sense of security.

Checking your report frequently would be more accurate because you'd notice when the fraudulent account is opened--long before unpaid debt shows up in your credit score.

You can check your reports every 4 months for free. Just stagger when you check a report from the various companies at AnnualCreditReport.com.

 

[ponyo]

Like others said, Discover and couple other cards give you the real monthly FICO scores for free. FICO scores only go up to 850 so if it goes higher, it's fake score. The best protection against identity theft is credit freeze. That's free. Why pay for inferior credit monitoring service that only gives you false sense of security. Best protection is credit freeze, checking your free reports at annualcreditreport.com, and looking at free FICO score from card like Discover. That's the best protection and all three are free. But credit freeze is the key. There's no better protection than a credit freeze. Use it.

 

[CountZero]

Like others said, Discover and couple other cards give you the real monthly FICO scores for free. FICO scores only go up to 850 so if it goes higher, it's fake score. The best protection against identity theft is credit freeze. That's free. Why pay for inferior credit monitoring service that only gives you false sense of security. Best protection is credit freeze, checking your free reports at annualcreditreport.com, and looking at free FICO score from card like Discover. That's the best protection and all three are free. But credit freeze is the key. There's no better protection than a credit freeze. Use it.

It is also worth noting there isn't A FICO score, there are a myriad of FICO scores. Each score is a different rating program to factor in different kinds of risks. So the FICO score you see for getting a credit card, a car loan, renting an apartment, getting insurance or getting a mortgage can all be different.

The best you can do is compare the change of your score from the exact same source over time but you as a consumer really can't compare scores from two different sources.