Why do the credit scores from the 3 credit agencies have such a wide difference?

Question

My credit scores range from 648 with Equifax to 676 at Experian. TransUnion in the middle. Can anyone explain the difference and which agency is the most accurate or trusted?

Answer 1

because the credit bureaus are separate entities. they are tied together by what they do, but are separate. if you get reported to one agency, you may not another.

Answer 2

There really isn't one agency that is the most trustworthy. It's sort of like comparing Wendy's, McDonald's and Burger King. They all kind of do the same thing....they all have good points and bad ones.
Your scores are different b/c the three credit bureaus do not share information with one another - just like Wendy's does not have the McDonald's recipe for their special sauce. What makes it more complicated is that credit companies only report to certain bureaus - not all three. For example, Visa may only report to TransUnion while your car loan reports to all three. So, the other two bureaus have no idea you have a good payment history w/ Visa and those scores will not reflect that. Your car loan, on the other hand will help you across the board if you have a good status with that.
Creditors actually pay money and "subscribe" to the credit bureaus in order to report to them. That's why sometimes you'll find that smaller companies only report to one or two and not all three.
Just to make things even more complicated for the consumers, the credit bureaus do not use the same "grading scale". The only thing that is common in this area is that the higher your score, the better.
Here are the scoring ranges:
TransUnion: 150-934
Equifax: 300-850
Experian: 330-830
Even if all of their reported information was the same, the fact that they use different scales would skew the numbers anyway.
There are a multitude of factors that make the scores different. I hope that helps!

Answer 3

Because not all creditors report to all 3 bureaus. Some only report to 1 or 2 bureaus. Additionally, they use slightly different proprietary scoring models which causes some score variations.