I have been paying mostly cash since my BK. Which was due to a business failure. The BK is done, and I have a couple of credit cards but am confused about their reporting of balances due. My credit reports show a balance due, yet, I pay the balance due off every month. I have not paid any late charges or interest on any credit transaction in years. The two banks in question are Capital One and Merrick Bank. I am asking because my Equifax score just decreased because they reported a "balance increase". In the case of Capital One, from $19 to $83. There is no past due or previous balance. The line is $1,500. In the case of Merrick Bank, the balance due went from $198 to $750, with a credit line of $3,400. Again, there are no past due balances or previous balance. Since I pay off the balances early in the billing cycle, I was shocked to see this degrading of my 725 credit score due to balances due. And what is even more aggravating, is that I have not yet even received the bills yet for the "balances due".
On another subject, I had an account with Firestone and only used it occasionally. Over the past few years, the account was inactive. Recently Firestone cancelled the account due to inactivity. They sent a letter saying that they would be happy to extend me credit if I applied again. There was no amounts due, no payments were ever late, but again Equifax docked my FICO score for the cancellation. This does not seen fair or right since the account was actually in Good Standing, just not used. Can I fight this with Equifax?
I have worked hard to recover from the BK and both these situations just makes me want to convert to 100% cash from now on.
Should I just cancel the cards? Fight EquiFax? I am looking for advice here on how to proceed. Thank you for taking the time to wade through this note! :-)
