Are All Credit Reports the Same?

The short answer is "no." Here's why:

Each bureau's credit reports differ. Your creditors report your account details to one or more of the credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian & TransUnion). Large consumer finance companies, mortgage lenders and auto lenders send monthly updates to all three. Smaller companies may select just one or two bureaus for reporting, leading to somewhat different pictures.

Would it surprise you to find you have a credit score of 680 at one bureau and only 640 at another? It's very common. Also true is that any or all of the bureaus can have mistakes not appearing on the others.

That's why it's crucial to review your credit reports from all three bureaus at least once per year. Most consumer credit reporting companies make this easy by offering merged 3 in 1 reports. You can clearly see the differences and figure out what's necessary to optimize each bureau's report for highest score, fraud prevention and error correction. It's easy to find a free online credit report, but not as easy to find a free fico score-but you'll need both from all three bureaus for the truest evaluation. Here are more reasons why.

Credit report formats differ. Data appearing on credit reports comes from raw bits of information. It's up to each bureau or agency to format the data so it's clear. Credit reports in the past were notoriously hard to read, complicated by the overuse of symbols & abbreviations that only a banker could understand (if lucky).

Thanks to the consumerizing of credit reports in recent years, all providers are getting wise about make them easy to read. Designers and writers are now employed to create icons, graphical groupings and definitions that really work, even when working with merged credit reports. Make sure you get a format that's easy to read by viewing your provider's sample reports online in advance. If you don't like it, try another.

Credit reports pulled for different purposes will have different results. Though it's a credit-score related issue, it's a question often posed by confused consumers: How come the credit reports & scores I ordered myself don't match the ones my mortgage broker has?