Expert: kkemper - 3/5/2005

Question
Hi,
 I hope this is in your area of knowledge.
 I saw a story on tv about how to get the lowest credit interest rates and they mentioned the FICA credit report. The best score to have is between 720 & 850.  My question is, Is there a web site, or credit bureau, etc. to go to that will give you a FICA score. Also I have heard that if there are too many enquiries made about you, it looks bad to other creditors. Is this true?
                             Thanks,
                              Jack

Answer
the Fair Issac Scoring system PROBABLY started with
a good intent; provide a scoring system that meant
something, that was responsible and that could be easily
corrected by the "credit holder" under normal circumstances.

WHILE IT IS CORRECT that the higher the score, the easier
it is to get credit and the lower the interest rate,
I have also found that the 3 agencies whose separate
scores make up the tri merge group, have gotten way out
of hand in a power thing.  YOUR score, as i learned the
hard way, is 100% arbitrary, cannot be changed by the
holder of the credit and errors are common and not
something easily changable by 3 agencies that are not
interested in helping credit seekers.

I have 2 birthdates from one agency and a wrong name
and when I asked the agency to change the wrong data,
they said that was not something they were able to do
nor interested--and an offer to sue them met indifference.

So, just pay your bills on time and ignore the
bureaus for--like a deck of cards, what you are dealt
each hand is arbitrary.

thanks for asking