myFICO Score Watch with FICO Email Alerts – Review

Score Watch is the set-it-and-forget-it credit score product. This product is a subscription service which unlike many monitoring services pushes FICO credit score updates to you in the form of email and SMS cell text messages.

How Score Watch Works

Typically, a consumer will start using this product by pulling one of the 2 reports available, leaving the 2nd one for a later date. Once you get your report, the Score Watch platform keeps a history of your credit scores going forward and is checking to see when your score changes. But it also allows you to be notified in case you change interest rate qualifying bands.

Score Watch has five tabs that make up the product. The tab that means the most is the settings tab. Here you can set the score you want alerts when you reach that target. Next, you can set targets for account percentage increases, dollar increases (e.g. $500) and notification of usage of inactive cards.

The other tabs track your history and also show you

The company was smart about security in that you get alerts that say “ your score has increased by 11 points” instead of saying “your new score is 726”. This is nice should your email or cell phone be compromised at some point.

This is a great product for someone looking to find out exactly when their score peaks to apply for loans at the best time. It also works well as an ID theft product as ID theft would lead to a noticeable score alert.

FreeCreditReport.com – Review

FreeCreditReport Review

This is a review of FreeCreditReport.com also known as Triple Advantage.

Pros: Tri merged reports

Cons: No FICO scores, expensive.  Once was a 30-day trial and has been reduced to a 7-day trial.

We’ve all seen the ads and we’ve all heard the jingle, now let’s review the product.  FreeCreditReport.com aka ConsumerInfo.com aka Triple Advantage is owned by Experian, one of the largest credit reporting agencies.  This business is reported larger than $500MM in annual revenue and they boast of their 20 MM consumers you’ve seen their credit report.

How does the product match up?  It’s pretty similar to other monitoring products, which all feature good side by side comparison.  In the video, you can see examples where some tradelines are not captured by all three bureaus, so this is helpful for spotting errors.  The online dispute feature is not, but I don’t usually recommend this, as doing offline dispute letters leads to a better paper trail.

What’s in a Name?

A lot, “free” certainly implies free and it is …for 7 days.  The domain is also eerily similar to the AnnualCreditReport.com website.  I am not sure how the other bureaus really agreed on this.  Experian must benefit from consumers who think FreeCreditReport is the government sanctioned website.

Is it worth the $14.95/month?

I prefer the path of getting your Equifax FICO Score via Score Watch.  Why?  Well, let’s do a little math.

• FreeCreditReport.com:  $14.95 * 12 = $179.40
• Score Watch $12.95 * 12 = $107.40 =$155.40

This is a way to save money and still get your FICO scores.  Of course, AnnualCreditReport.com is always free for the reports but the scores will cost you extra and you won’t get alerts.

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