@lhcole77 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
You are getting BALANCE CHANGE alerts on your three bureaus? Since when? They don't even claim, anymore, to be able to do that.
I gert alerts on all three when balances change--per card on EQ and EX; aggregate on TU.
Mine has been working well for quite some time now. I am very pleased.
This looks more like the way it should work. Maybe the administrators should study your monitoring setup so they can reproduce it for everybody else, because "very pleased" customers is not the norm.
If those are all the balance changes, and they are not missing anything in score changes, then they are doing for you what they don't even claim they are able to do with the service (they say only EQ gives them balance alerts with FICO score changes)...
@EW800 wrote:I may be able to share some " let everything report $0" info in the next couple of weeks as well. For the past six months or so, I had every card except one (Care Credit) show $0 balance. I just paid off the Care Creidt as well, so it is going to show $0 as well around 12/2/14. I will have a couple of weeks of all $0 balances and will then allow another card to report perhaps $25 or so. I am curious to see how much of a hit I take and PRAY that I do indeed get the points back when the other card reports a balance.
Isn't it fun playing FICO Roulette!
I can share my experience with this. In Feb this year, I got my second card, the Barclaycard Arrival+ World Mastercard, with a $600 credit line. I already had a Capital One Visa Platinum with $1250 limit. I don't have any other accounts (car loan, home loan, etc). I was naïve, I didn't know PIF meant let a balance report and then pay it before the due date. I thought PIF meant paying the entire amount before the statement generated.
Anyways, Barclaycard letter said that my TU score at the time of application was 679. For the next 6-7 months, I basically had 0 balance report on both my cards. Guess what? My score went up from 679 to 750 during that time! 
I didn't realize what I was doing, but it was working for me. Then I read about reporting a balance. My mistake was that I reported a small balance (~10%) on both my cards. My score dropped 14 points! At that point, I said to myself, I'm not reporting a balance again! But this month, I am letting only one of my cards report a balance. Let's see how it impacts the score. Keeping my fingers crossed. I'll try updating my results on this thread.
@slvrhwk wrote:
@EW800 wrote:I may be able to share some " let everything report $0" info in the next couple of weeks as well. For the past six months or so, I had every card except one (Care Credit) show $0 balance. I just paid off the Care Creidt as well, so it is going to show $0 as well around 12/2/14. I will have a couple of weeks of all $0 balances and will then allow another card to report perhaps $25 or so. I am curious to see how much of a hit I take and PRAY that I do indeed get the points back when the other card reports a balance.
Isn't it fun playing FICO Roulette!
I can share my experience with this. In Feb this year, I got my second card, the Barclaycard Arrival+ World Mastercard, with a $600 credit line. I already had a Capital One Visa Platinum with $1250 limit. I don't have any other accounts (car loan, home loan, etc). I was naïve, I didn't know PIF meant let a balance report and then pay it before the due date. I thought PIF meant paying the entire amount before the statement generated.
Just to clarify, PIF applies to both, paying before statement cut or after.
And I have done this same thread experiment in the past and it's very clear that only one card reporting with minimal utilization maximizes the score.
@Anonymous wrote:
@slvrhwk wrote:
@EW800 wrote:I may be able to share some " let everything report $0" info in the next couple of weeks as well. For the past six months or so, I had every card except one (Care Credit) show $0 balance. I just paid off the Care Creidt as well, so it is going to show $0 as well around 12/2/14. I will have a couple of weeks of all $0 balances and will then allow another card to report perhaps $25 or so. I am curious to see how much of a hit I take and PRAY that I do indeed get the points back when the other card reports a balance.
Isn't it fun playing FICO Roulette!
I can share my experience with this. In Feb this year, I got my second card, the Barclaycard Arrival+ World Mastercard, with a $600 credit line. I already had a Capital One Visa Platinum with $1250 limit. I don't have any other accounts (car loan, home loan, etc). I was naïve, I didn't know PIF meant let a balance report and then pay it before the due date. I thought PIF meant paying the entire amount before the statement generated.
Just to clarify, PIF applies to both, paying before statement cut or after.
And I have done this same thread experiment in the past and it's very clear that only one card reporting with minimal utilization maximizes the score.
You let all cards report?
@lhcole77 wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
@slvrhwk wrote:
@EW800 wrote:I may be able to share some " let everything report $0" info in the next couple of weeks as well. For the past six months or so, I had every card except one (Care Credit) show $0 balance. I just paid off the Care Creidt as well, so it is going to show $0 as well around 12/2/14. I will have a couple of weeks of all $0 balances and will then allow another card to report perhaps $25 or so. I am curious to see how much of a hit I take and PRAY that I do indeed get the points back when the other card reports a balance.
Isn't it fun playing FICO Roulette!
I can share my experience with this. In Feb this year, I got my second card, the Barclaycard Arrival+ World Mastercard, with a $600 credit line. I already had a Capital One Visa Platinum with $1250 limit. I don't have any other accounts (car loan, home loan, etc). I was naïve, I didn't know PIF meant let a balance report and then pay it before the due date. I thought PIF meant paying the entire amount before the statement generated.
Just to clarify, PIF applies to both, paying before statement cut or after.
And I have done this same thread experiment in the past and it's very clear that only one card reporting with minimal utilization maximizes the score.
You let all cards report?
YES, for the first year of my rebuilding credit I let everything post and PIF, right after. I did that to show those banks, and all others "watching" that I could spend and pay with no problem. I still think that is the best strategy, at the beginning.
After my BofA secured card graduated, I switched to optimization and conducted a number of experiments. In my findings, 1 card, 1% utilization, maximizes things (everything else remaining equal).
I had a 20 point drop in my TU FICO this month from two things: Took a HP for Chase CSP, and I let >50% util report on the card this month. Was curious to see how big of a hit UTIL really was, and it appears to be pretty substantial 
It's already been paid off now... was just curious to see the effect. And it ensures that I stay in the garden for the next month until my score returns to normal. 
Thanks for the test run, OP. Very interesting results.
@mikelo22 wrote:I had a 20 point drop in my TU FICO this month from two things: Took a HP for Chase CSP, and I let >50% util report on the card this month. Was curious to see how big of a hit UTIL really was, and it appears to be pretty substantial
It's already been paid off now... was just curious to see the effect. And it ensures that I stay in the garden for the next month until my score returns to normal.
Thanks for the test run, OP. Very interesting results.
I think it's fun to test things out and see effects. UTL is a big factor for sure, huh? <14% is a good place for me to be and ~7% has reaped me the biggest benefits so far.