Utilization versus payment history question

[pritchardhallhokie]

Good morning everyone.  I have a question regarding utilization of credit cards.  I recently had a car die on me (bad transmissio) and I had to rent a car for a month while I was getting prices on the transmission, finally decided to just buy a new car and move on.  Well, the way that Enterprise billed me, they authorized my card, then released it, reauthed every week and released.  Long story short, it overcharged a card I had placed it on by 800 bucks.  I only have a 1000 limit, so my card still has a 1800 balance, has for a few months.  I have continued to make payments on it, ( just the minimum as I've been trying to save $$) and have remained current on my card.  I finally have enough to pay down the balance in full on my credit card and I have this question:

I know that when I pay off my card, my UTI will go from 109% to 5%, which should give me at least a 60-75 point increase in my score.  I'm going to be apping in the early part of the year for a prime card or two, will these companies look at how long I carried a balance over the limit or simply the payment history and CURRENT uti?  I think they can only look at payment history and what my balances are at the time of apping, correct?

THANKS!!!!

[MarcinXP]

Hmm..good question. I think that the companies look at your utilization now and of course FICO won't remember previous utilization at all so you're good there. Now the report will show up High Balance and Credit Limit...of course that might look weird since you're high balance will be $1,800 and limit is only a $1000..but that does not neccessarily mean that you went over it...it could also mean that the bank lowered your limit at some point so I think you're also safe there. Unless you are apping for a card from the same bank I don't think you should have any issues. My question is what kind of a card allows you to go almost double over the limit ..LOL

[Guava]

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@pritchardhallhokie wrote:

  I think they can only look at payment history and what my balances are at the time of apping, correct?

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Yeah, whenever they pull your report, it'll show your info at the time of the pull, your reports don't keep track of previous balance. However, there are some cards out there that report "highest balance", but I think those are no preset spending limit types. 

[Anonymous]

Like others said, there's the high balance field. I'm not sure how much info the banks can get at the time of your pull, but for example on my EX report, I can see what my credit limit was month to month, and what the high balance is - so in theory if they have access to that, they could figure out that you went way over the limit on the card. But since I don't think they're going to get access to all your payment history (just the most recent one), there's no way for them to know if the high balance is due to a CLD or going over the limit or what.

At the same time, since there's absolutely nothing you can do about it at this point, I think your best option is just to worry about paying the balance down to get your util% down and going from there. The only thing I could think of that could make it look 'better' on paper is if you got a CLI that goes above your high balance (for example, going up to $2k), but I doubt the bank is going to give that out all things considered.

[Wolf3]

Utilization is only calculated at the current point in time.    So past utiliztion makes no difference.   

I don't think there is any data in the CR to calculate past utilizations anyway.

[johnnie198x]

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@Wolf3 wrote:

Utilization is only calculated at the current point in time.    So past utiliztion makes no difference.   

I don't think there is any data in the CR to calculate past utilizations anyway.

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Oh you bet there are past data to calculate util, but who would care about past util. Pull EXP report, and you'll see the history of balances.

[Walt_K]

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@johnnie198x wrote:

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@Wolf3 wrote:

Utilization is only calculated at the current point in time.    So past utiliztion makes no difference.   

I don't think there is any data in the CR to calculate past utilizations anyway.

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Oh you bet there are past data to calculate util, but who would care about past util. Pull EXP report, and you'll see the history of balances.

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I've read on here that the past balance data that we see on our EX report is not seen by lenders, but I don't know if that is true.

[Anonymous]

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@Walt_K wrote:

I've read on here that the past balance data that we see on our EX report is not seen by lenders, but I don't know if that is true.

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I've read that too, but I find it suspect. When I applied for my BCP originally and was declined, I had a 4% util. However, months ago I had very high util on my single card, ~80% for a period of 4 months. And high utilization was one of the reasons amex declined me for the BCP.

[CreditAble]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Walt_K wrote:

I've read on here that the past balance data that we see on our EX report is not seen by lenders, but I don't know if that is true.

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I've read that too, but I find it suspect.

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I also find that claim suspect.

The only reason we can access our credit reports is because of government mandate. Why would Experian show us info that the lender doesn't see, since the government doesn't require that. Why is info even in our reports that is not ever shown to lenders? Rest assured if we can see something in our reports, others with permissible purpose will also be able to see it.

A case could be made that it might be like soft pulls only viewed by us. If the payment history is actually included for our own auditing/protection, then it would be required to be included in all other credit bureaus reports also.

Experian used to include just balance history. Recently Experian has been providing (historic) monthly minimum payment, and actual monthly payment data. Experian is doing that just for our benefit? Sure right.

[haulingthescoreup]

It would be pretty near impossible to calculate util for former dates, because you'd have to have the balances on all accounts at a precise time on a precise date.

You couldn't use the displayed balances on an Experian report, because the Chase balance might be from the 3rd, and then paid off on the 4th, and the Citi balance would be from the 8th, and paid off on the 9th, and the BofA balance from the 13th, and paid off on the 14th, and yada yada yada. In other words, the EX report shows what your balance was on each account during a given month, but not at a given point in time, which is how util is calculated.

As for the other, I would be flat-out astonished if lenders didn't see the displayed balances. Why else would they be there?