Its interesting that they claim no one single item can be worth a high numbers of points. Thoughts?
http://redtape.msnbc.com/2008/03/having-taken-a.html#posts
If any single credit item could have that much of an impact on a credit score, it would cast some doubt on the efficacy of the scoring system, which would seem fragile if it were subject to such wild swings.
Both Ulzheimer and Nelson say no one change could have such a dramatic impact on a score. In fact, they say, there is no way to assign a point value to individual items. Each time a lender gets a credit score, the scoring formula is re-run on an entire credit report, and a new score is generated from scratch. Because account balances are generally fluid, there is no way to assign exact values to any item.
There is an explanation, though, for large swings. Ulzheimer says that consumers fall into different buckets, or scorecards, within the Fair Isaac formula. One scorecard is for those with short credit histories, or "thin" credit files. Another is for those who have filed bankruptcies. Another is the "derog" scorecard, for those who have derogatory (unpaid) accounts in their files. Each scorecard uses a different formula. When a consumer shifts from one to the other -- something called "scorecard hopping" -- their score can shift dramatically up or down. So, a consumer who jumps from the "derog" scorecard to the "clean history" scorecard may indeed see a big credit score increase, for instance.
That means consumers with perfect credit can suffer much more from a single mistake, or a single dispute with a lender, than a consumer with bad credit.
Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value
Albert Einstein 1879 - 1955
800+ Club
