Hi gabledodge,
The Capital One Credit Tracker, as with many other non-FICO score monitoring options, is not precise or accurate. 
It's what's called a FAKO score, or "educational" score. From the help page:
Your free Credit Tracker score from TransUnion is a good reference point for your current credit standing. This informational/educational score is not used for credit or lending decisions. |
Anything that doesn't say FICO is best used for relative comparisons (some people here will tell you they're useless... I'd say they're just not representative of what creditors/lendors see). You can track your own credit trends and guestimate the effect of changes, but don't expect it to match reality exactly.
That being said, my score from C1's tracker is only two points lower than an actual FICO notice I got about 3 weeks earlier. By comparison, an Equifax 3-bureau report was 40-60 points lower on all three FAKO scores vs the real ones. And I had two EX FICO scores reported one day apart with a nearly 20 point difference.
To be completely honest, your 760+ FAKO score is probably pretty good, and if your genuine FICO score is there as well, you probably don't have to worry much. 16% reported util wouldn't be bad and your post-payoff 1.5% util will probably update within a month.
@gabledodge wrote:The customer service rep. mislead me. I called and asked if the score was a "true" score or hypothesis. Anyway, my wife and I plan to take an anniversary trip within the next month, and I know we'll use the CC's for approx. $5,000 dollars worth of travel expenses, and then immediately pay them off. Can you suggest a good credit card for possible airline tickets, rewards, and etc. Do you think adding a new credit card will increase my score within two years?
-K.
There's no way to recommend what the best travel card would be for you and your family's travel needs. It depends on what airlines hubs youre close to, what type of trip you want to take, what kinds of hotels you're looking into, whether you're into business/coach travel, domestic/international, etc. Current top travel cards include chase CSP + freedom combo for the flexibility it offers with its many travel partners, Amex MR points for another group of travel partners, or just pick the airline that you want to fly and earn miles on and get a branded card for them. There's a slew of information available if you're willing to do the research.
@gabledodge wrote:The customer service rep. mislead me. I called and asked if the score was a "true" score or hypothesis.
-K.
It's a true score, just not a genuine FICO score... and all credit scores are "hypothetical" since they can't see into the future. They just offer a simplification of your entire reported credit history into a number. Kinda like a movie critic rating. Is 3 stars out of 4 a "true" rating? Yes. Is it authoritative, and does it represent your movie-watching needs? Maybe, maybe not.
Also, there are several (dozens of?) different FICO models, and various creditors/lenders may use very different models. I believe it's been said recently that Amex uses internal scoring models, based on their own information as well as your credit report. And then there's the FICO8 Bankcard score that apparently has a different range than traditional FICO scores. Confusing much? yep.
Hope this helps. It took me a while to get this far in my score awareness... for a while I thought the scores I paid Equifax for were FICO, but then again I always used them as a relative score/progress indicator rather than "I must have 800 FICOs"
