Experian vs ClearScore

Saga

Firstly, I do appreciate that we should not worry about credit scores as lenders take any notice of them.

That said, what likely reasons are there for me having a 999/999 Experian score but only 487/700 ClearScore (Equifax) score?

I have no debts (credit card used regularly & paid off in full every month), have but never use o/d, utilities on DD or paid off immediately, have always been on electoral roll, never had any CCJs/IVAs, lived at last 2 addresses for >10 years.

Just a little baffled as the CS report actually says there are ten positives and zero negatives on my file. How am I supposed to improve my score if there are no negatives?

[Deleted User]

That's why the score is to be ignored

[Deleted User]

The difference is due to one of the scores being meaningless, while the other is merely codswallop.

Saga

Haha. Fairynuff.

Superscrooge

Check your score with Noddle and you will probably be even more baffled!

Back in March Clearscore and Noddle rated me in the 'Good' category and Experian (via MSE Credit Club) had me in the 'Very Poor' category. (I'd be interested if anyone has ever managed the full range of both 'Excellent and Very Poor' in the same month!)

Since then all three CRA's have converged to rate me either 'Fair' or 'Good'.

Difficult to see any reason why the scores varied so much. Apart from one or two credit searches all three Credit files were almost identical.

The general advice is not to worry about your score, just concentrate on checking the information recorded in your credit file is accurate

DCFC79

They all rate different aspects of the reports differently. Dont let it get to you

Saga

One I thing I did notice was that, while not completely wrong, ClearScore tends to show the old debit and credit card numbers (actually just the last 4 digits), not their current numbers.

Is it worthwhile contacting them to update these?

[Deleted User]

No. It's still the same account.

nic_c

If the scores were all the same, people wouldn't feel the need to check more than one. If they didn't have some mysterious factor that allowed your score to have room for improvement, then they couldn't hope to entice you on to improvement and monitoring services and generate an income stream.

Even though many people now know the scores are meaningless, they are still driven to improve them, its human nature.

matttye

September 2015: 477/700
October 2017: 478/700

It has been +/-20 that figure the whole time.

Throughout that time I've had 10 positives and no negatives listed on my account. I paid off some car finance and spent and then paid off about £4k on a 0% interest credit card during that time.

Seems random to me. I usually ignore the score and just look at the information on my report. Just posting this as it's illustrative that the score doesn't really change much even if you take on or pay off large amounts of debt.

molerat

What makes the scores even more ridiculous is the UK and regional averages along with my score positioning in them is completely different across all 3.