Balance decrease and a score drop???

[dsw283]

I feel I'm pretty savvy when it comes to understanding my credit score but I've never seen this nor does it make sense.  My current credit utilization is somewhere around 45%. I have 10 cards and 4 having balances. I know it's a bit high but I recently had to put my fall semester of school on a zero percent interest card. I paid paid $500 on one card and it brought that single card down to 15% utilization.  I received a credit alert today stating that my score dropped 4 points because my utilization dropped? My total limits are around 22000 and my usage is around 10000.  Why would my score drop?

[takeshi74]

The problem is potentially two fold:

1. You're probably not accounting for all factors involved.  You would need to carefully compare a report prior to the change with a report after the change.  We can't account for details on your reports that we don't know about.

2. You may be assuming that account activity is instantly reported and that's not necessarily the case.  Are you comparing actual reported utilization or are you relying on utilization that you calculated?  It's the data on your reports that matter for scoring.  Does the alert acutally indicate that your utilization dropped and your score dropped?

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@dsw283 wrote:

I paid paid $500 on one card and it brought that single card down to 15% utilization.

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When was this payment made?  When does this card report?

[Anonymous]

I have similar issue, specifically myfico alert says that a DECREASE in balance percentage resulted in a DECREASE in score by 7pts! I know for a fact it is related a few larger payments to a credit card or two. Would like to know what this is all about.

[lhcole77]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I have similar issue, specifically myfico alert says that a DECREASE in balance percentage resulted in a DECREASE in score by 7pts! I know for a fact it is related a few larger payments to a credit card or two. Would like to know what this is all about.

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Unfortunately there is not always a 100% correlation between a score change and the alert that is associated with it. There may be other factors in play.

[narendra953]

@lhcole77 seems like you ar ejust responding to questions though you don't have a good knowledge of things. Its evident from your answer. I have also observed lower scores when balance on credit card decrease. The alert I received from myfico.com specifically says the lower scores is because balance decreased. So please answer if you know. Don't just say there may be many other things on our Credit Report that you don't know of.  

[lhcole77]

Welcome to the Forums, narendra. I completely disagree with you. I've had score increases when my balance went up, decreases when it went down, and changes for no reason whatsoever. There are so many factors at play with the Fico algorithm that it would be impossible to know for certain all the time what is impacting a score. Given that and some of the glitches still being worked out in the 3B product I stand by what I say.