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Don't be fooled. VantageScore is not a result of credit bureaus having an inate desire to make things clearer and better for the consumer. If you want to know the reason for VatangeScore you only have to look just after the term FICO. Just to the right of it, you'll see that little R with a circle; trademark.

Trademark defined: "A name, symbol, or other device identifying a product, officially registered and legally restricted to the use of the owner or manufacturer."

Meaning, of course, that the bureaus would have to license, share the pie, with Fair Issac in order to offer a standardized FICO score, something they would rather not do and the reason why we have three possible credit scores today.

While Equifax has an arrangment with Fair Isaac to utilize the FICO score in conjunction with its credit reporting, the other bureaus do not. And you can bet they, as well as Equifax, love the idea of having their own standardized figure with their own little R with a circle after it. It's all about ownership rights and money.

VantageScore, or some new system could, in fact, make things clearer, but it likely won't in practice because, as the previous poster mentioned, your score will likely still vary between all the bureaus.

The best thing for us would be if we could have one credit score drawn from information from all three bureaus. I believe that's what Fair Issac intended, ultimately, but it's not going to happen anytime soon.

As for the deceptive practices of these companies: When the Feds made credit bureaus offer one free credit report per year to consumers, they complied because that had to. Yet, at the same time, they created their own sites (like the deceptive freecreditreport.com), which has the appearance of being the means to obtain your free annual credit report but, in reality, is selling credit monitoring and packaging a 'free' credit report with that vieled offer. The REAL, mandated site where you can get copies of your free credit reports is annualcreditreport.com - a site/link that you will find difficult, if not impossible, to find on any of the bureaus' web sites.

We must pay attention to three bureaus and multiple credit scores and I'm not saying that you shouldn't, but the ultimate advice when dealing with such matters is to learn all you can about how the system works and keep your guard up when dealing with these organizations.