SoulSmilen wrote:I beg to differ. Although installment accounts don't count as much as revolving accounts, there is some score improvement through balance reduction.
No, I beg to differ!
Here's an example:
Here's an example:auto loan of 30K and a balance of 20K with a perfect payment history. pay 15K one month and the new balance is 5k and score might go up a few points or maybe none at all.
a person with three CCs, each with 5K CLs and balances of $3,250 and a perfect payment history. util 65% and pays all three balances down to $490 about 15% util, the result a much larger spike in their scores. In fact, if the util goes to 1-9% it would not surprised me to see scores increase 50, 60 or more points.
I think you are really over doing it with installment loans.
dammit, i was right after all. shouldnt have deleted. thanks fused! 
I didn't overdo anything as I didn't give a number or reference as to how much it would increase. All I basically said is that yes, balance reductions do cause some point increase, but it's not counted near as much as revolving balance. Kinda the same thing you said... 
However, my report is still a hard example.. I recently disputed a balance on a small installment loan and the bank didn't respond in time so Transunion deleted it. It was my oldest tradeline and left the rest of my report with an average age of ~5 months. My score jumped 30 points. Maybe that's not so telling in itself, but through griping at TU and letting them know that the bank did report monthly as usual and asking them to count that as the response worked - kind of. The TL is back on there, however the balance is still wrong; it now says 0 balance. The score? Up another 5.
There's something to installment balance, even if it isn't as important as revolving.