I can’t tell you how many times I get asked, “why are my scores so drastically different when I pull my credit and then go into purchase something and the lender pulls my credit?” It can be down right embarassing to borrowers who, because of looking at a credit report off of the internet, think that there credit score is very respectable, to only find out it is not as high as they thought. Why is this? Because when you pull a credit report as a consumer, more than likely that company is not using FiCO’s scoring model to score your credit report. They are using a model that they have created to be as close to FICO as they can without actually being a true FICO score. The information contained in your credit report is the same as what a lender will see, however, the credit scores can vary tremendously, 100 or more points. So be very careful whenn you pull your credit report yourself not to rely to much on the score, but look at the contents of your report. If you have derogatory items on your credit report, especially if they are recent, then you know your credit score isn’t going to be pristine.