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Comment by excerionsforte | Hacker News Reader

My first reaction is NOOOOOOOO.

I first used Credit Karma in college, which made me aware of my credit score. Credit Karma had a credit simulator at that time, which I would play around with to see what was the best course of action to get my score up up in a very short amount of time. I got to where I want and will maintain it.

Credit Karma's tax solution is the best I have ever used for my case! I still use Mint, but it is in maintenance mode. I can only hope that the CK's tax solution stays intact in not a transition to TurboTax.

The for-profit tax companies already screwed up with the IRS revamping the agreement, so as to compete with them: https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-is-still-trickin.... I hope the government will take good advantage of this opportunity.

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I use Credit Karma but the “Fako Credit Score” has little to do with the credit score lenders use.

Well one landlord asked for a printout of the Credit Report and Credit Karma was cited as one source of report. :) Credit Score is applicable to many places.

Their Credit Alerts feature did alert my to fraudulent activity almost immediately At this point if CK had offered a subscription side, I would have bought in.

They were being cheap. I was a landlord at one point. It’s about $30 to use a tenant screening service and you charge that as an “application fee”.

Ey, I won't complain about what a landlord requires if it don't cost me anything and they get the information they need to rent me a place. :)

Some landlords charge application fees for dozens of applicants but they only run the credit check/screening for the first few. Also the amount of personal information requested is ridiculous.

I'd much rather use one of those systems where you get your own report from a reputable company and share the report id. Instead of paying an overpriced application fee to a bunch of places.

See my previous reply. A real tenant screening is much more than a credit check.

With most screening services, the tenant takes a hit to their credit score in the form of a hard pull.

I just pulled my actual credit reports from all three bureaus and my landlord was satisfied.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AnnualCreditReport.com

A credit pull for screening is considered different than one for credit. At most it’s like 3-5 points and the effects disappear fast.

But a tenant screening also looks for evictions (a civil case), criminal cases and whether you are on the sex offender list.

>A credit pull for screening is considered different than one for credit. At most it’s like 3-5 points and the effects disappear fast.

Still a hard pull.

>But a tenant screening also looks for evictions (a civil case), criminal cases and whether you are on the sex offender list.

True, though some are modular and can be run without the credit portion.

I had 5 screening pulls this year because of all the things involving an interstate move and changing jobs with different layers of background checks. In the process of getting financing for a house and I had to provide explanation and documentation that i wasn't hiding debt for each of them. It may not affect your various 'scores' but its still a pain in the ass.

> lenders use

i.e. when you take out a loan.

This is the key difference. So far none of the free credit scores I've been receiving match the number pulled when applying for a loan.

Many credit card companies do give you your real FICO score monthly.

But I find everything else about Credit Karma well worth the tradeoff - free access to two of your credit reports, a summary of all of your debt (without entering your bank credentials into random third party services), credit alerts etc.

It’s not really privacy invasive. Lenders already have the ability to get the same summary of your credit information without your consent.

This. My main credit card offers this as a service (check your credit score every 30 days) and my experience has been that its the same number people who want to check on my credit worthiness get when they inquire (sample set 3 car purchases, two type specific credit card applications)

I think that says more about the landlord than it does about Credit Karma.

I user cozy.co to manage my properties. They have all background checks built in and ready to go out the box and emails your tenants links to proceed and accept payment.

Stupid ignorant landlords? What are the chances? 8-)

There are different scoring systems (FICO vs VantageScore) with different versions, and the variations in calculation can easily create a 100 point difference.

CreditKarma uses VantageScore 3.0 so any lender using the same system and version should see the same number, but most older lenders and bigger loans use FICO.

My first reaction is "I am a fool in man's clothing" for not taking a job there recently.

I turned down way their way better comp package and a career advancing title... because I wanted to live in NYC.

C'est la vie I guess

FWIW if your job offer was recent you wouldn’t have made any money from the acquisition and now you’d be working for intuit.

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