The score we're giving is one of the scores we actually sell to credit grantors. We'll be changing some of the score factor codes to make them easier to understand. Equifax, the third major credit reporting bureau, said that while it supports expanded disclosure and consumer education, a little information can be a dangerous thing. This uncoordinated action could very well cause harm and confusion to consumers, causing them to take action to better their score when their actions, without thorough understanding, could have the opposite effect. One of the issues Catucci cites is that there is no single score that's used industry-wide, and when a consumer sees one score, it may not be the one that's used by the lender he chooses.
Acceptable scores vary from lender to lender, and many lenders use customized scores.
While a mortgage broker may be concerned about any kind of a late payment and place heavy weight on that piece of information, a department store credit card issuer might be less concerned about a late payment to the phone company and place more emphasis on retail payment history. If I know my score on one scorecard and understand what it means, it wouldn't be wildly different on another scorecard. A final issue that consumers may not even realize exists in the furor over disclosure is that a credit score is just one kind of score that's generated every day. There are also scores for making pre-marketing decisions that predict how likely someone will be to respond to an offer. Those kinds of models may use credit file information, plus other sources of information available to individual businesses.