Buy Here Pay Here Huntsville, AL

One of the things that should come to mind when you hear the words "car credit" are the words "credit report". The reason it should is that in order for you to get car credit, a lender and maybe even the car dealer will have to request your credit report with one, two or even all three of the credit bureaus. When this happens, you might notice two things:

• Your credit scores from each of the three bureaus will probably not be the same.
• Even if you know your credit score, it will probably be different from the ones the dealer and lender have.

Here�s why: All three credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, use a version of the FICO score that was developed in 1956 by Fair Isaac. Equifax calls theirs a BEACON score, Experian uses the Experian/Fair Isaac Risk Model and TransUnion�s version is the EMPIRICA score. All three bureaus have also introduced a new scoring model that is not from Fair Isaac, called VantageScore. When you look for car credit, your three FICO scores, one from each bureau, should all be the same just as your three VantageScore scores should all be identical. But the scores are usually not the same and the difference can almost always be attributed to the fact that the three bureaus are all reporting different information about you. There is a reason for this. Unless your credit file is fairly new and you�ve never applied for car credit, there are bound to be differences in the credit bureaus. Among the many reasons these differences exist:

• While many creditors report to all three bureaus, some report to only one or two.
• It may take one bureau longer than another to report a new creditor
• It may take one bureau longer than the others to remove an old record � such as car credit that is older than 5 years

The other factor that can cause a difference in the score you have is called "weighting". When you need car credit and request your credit score, it is based on standard factors that treat or "weight" your credit score according to a set formula. When a car dealer or lender requests your credit score for car credit, they request a score that is "weighted" to further emphasize how you have paid your car credit in the past. If your car credit payment history is worse than your overall payment history, this will lower your weighted score versus a standard score. If, on the other hand, your car payment history has been better than your overall credit history, your weighted score will actually be higher than your standard score. In addition to car credit, some automobile insurance companies are using credit scores to determine insurance rates.