iQualifier.com Free Credit Score & Report Review – Legit Or Scam?

At first glance iQualifer looks like your standard free credit monitoring website (such as Quizzle, Credit Karma& Credit Sesame). The similiarites unfortunately ended pretty quickly, once I clicked “Free Credit Score & Report” I was asked for a registration code. You’ll only receive an iQualifer registration code if you also receive a “risk based pricing letter” from one of apparently 6,500 participating mortgage lenders. There is an option to proceed if you don’t have a registration code, but by doing so you’re required to pay $5.95 and have your credit card on file with iQualifer.

If you want to continue to receive credit monitoring from iQualifer or access their tools, they require you to pay a fee of $24 per month.

What Score & Report Do They Offer?

They offer a TransUnion credit report (unlikely to be a full report, but we’ve been unable to confirm or deny at this stage) and a CE credit score based on TransUnion data. This is the same score that Quizzle used to be based on (they now use version 3 of Vantage Score), although Ed DeShields claims that they now use version 4 of the CE credit score, whereas Quizzle was using version 1.5.

We haven’t been able to check our V4 CE credit score and compare it to our TransUnion FICO score, but last time we did compare the CE score to FICO there was a difference of over 89 points.

Our Verdict

Don’t bother with this credit monitoring site, they provide you with a FAKO score and charge you for the privilege. If you want a free FAKO score, go with one of the free credit monitoring sites. If you’re applying for an important line of credit (such as a mortgage or auto loan) and want to find out your FICO score then our recommendation is to use one of the many ways to find it out for free OR use a myFICO promo code to get a discounted score.

We believe that this website is primarily aimed at uneducated users who are vulnerable after being denied for a loan, in an effort to get them to sign up for a monthly billed product that they most likely do not need.

We’ve been in touch with Ed DeShields for an interview and media account, but at this stage he has failed reply to any of our correspondence.